Every morning, Moon Knight wakes up in the body of a mild-mannered museum gift shop assistant called Steven Grant. In Jeremy Slater’s TV retool, though, there is a twist. (Just one of the reasons why he doesn’t cycle to work.) So that is Moon Knight, a nocturnal warrior battling evil for us schmoes, while sporting impressive abs and a cape so voluminous he would get it caught in his bicycle spokes if he didn’t tuck it into his posing pouch. She, as you may recall from your primary school ancient Egypt project, has a hippo’s hindquarters, a lion’s forequarters and the head of a crocodile, making her, if not a looker in the conventional sense, quite the formidable foe. The son of a rabbi, Marc Spector was a CIA-agent-cum-mercenary who was mortally wounded, then brought back to life by Khonshu to battle the bird-skulled Egyptian moon god’s no less freaky nemesis, Ammit. His backstory is uncannily similar to mine. Moon Knight made his first appearance in the comic Werewolf by Night in 1975. We may not need another hero, but, if we did, better Moon Knight than Dark Knight.

Moon Knight is as witty and philosophically interesting as the first two. The results, such as WandaVision and What If …?, have been more rewarding than anyone who sat through Avengers: Age of Ultron might have imagined possible. Since 2018, Feige has been astutely plundering the Marvel database for obscure characters whose backstories can be fluffed for TV series. Into this inflationary gallimaufry of intergalactic flapdoodle comes Moon Knight (Disney+), a TV spin-off developed by the Marvel boss, Kevin Feige.

The Guardian Specter by Marc Lovell