Ah, poor Mr. Hyde. He's still there to jobber for an easy intro victory for heroes. Guess its nice he's filling in for Rhino or the Wrecking Crew who tend to do that.
What always got me curious about MGH, or Mutant Growth Hormone, was that it often wasn't collected from mutants, and that inducing super-powers in others with a drug doesn't make them a mutant, either. You can collect blood or tissue or fluid samples from any metahuman, such as the Mattie Frank Spider-Woman or Spider-Man or Cloak or so on. And injecting serums or potions into someone to induce super powers is old hat, really. Just in the 60's, everyone had access to a lab and zapped up on some sort of "rays" - now its basically a new underground steroid. The concept is strong, even if not totally new (the Power Broker, for instance, did this **** in the 80's, but you don't see Bendis paying tribute to that, just acting like he invented it himself, like thought balloons), I just was always curious about the name. A better one would be SGH, or Superhuman Growth Hormone. Or even Metahuman Growth Hormone. Mutant implies you can only take it from mutants or it only works on mutants, and neither is true. But, eh, who needs technicalities.
The preview looks okay, but I'm not being suckered into another Bendis ongoing. He always fails. He'll produce one good issue out of a dozen mediocre to obnoxious issues and expect the moon for it - pun intended.
Also...geez, look at that decompression. This is a standard, "masked hero interrupts some sort of drug buy" sort of deal. It's stretched to 6 pages and counting. Back in the 80's it was maybe half that. It's ridiculous. And Marvel wonders why people tune out or, gasp, wait for a trade. Do we REALLY need ****ing four pages of Nameless Mook #1 talking about useless stuff to Nameless Mook #2? Bendis is one of those writers personally responsible for the style of decompressed, 6 issues or bust for every mundane plot deal that has effectively DESTROYED comic books. It has led to the era of charging more in cover price for less of a story every issue, and fans have fled over the years AND WILL NEVER RETURN. To the average person, paying $3-$4 for perhaps a 3 minute scene from a TV show is ludicrous, and I can't blame many for fleeing. It encourages trade waiting, which Marvel hates. It makes no sense to me.
roach said:
well I think that at Marvel there is this prevailing theory that Moon Knight is just crazy Batman.Its hardly a Bendis trait.
Agreed. But it is a bad theory that hasn't helped Moon Knight stick around for the past 2-3 years. It is a theory that has been exaggerated past its usefulness, much as writing bleak, life destroying stories with Daredevil. Even after 20 years of marriage, Marvel decided Spidey needed a drastic change. M-Day drastically changed the X-Men. Yet instead of exploring the pulp angles, they exaggerate the subplot of Specter as a crazy man, and that's a dead end sort of thing. You can't feel sympathy for too crazy a lead. It just becomes Generic Grim Hero 101, which was when I left this Charlie Husten run.
I'm not saying Specter should be the image of mental health. I am saying he shouldn't have to roll a die to figure out what super hero personality he is, and that his pulp origin is ripe for some genuinely new things. Look what mining the origin of Iron Fist that had been ignored for decades did for Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction on that franchise.
The honesty is Bendis could do whatever he wanted on Moon Knight. If he wanted to have him fight aliens on Saturn and grow to 600 feet tall as a regular super power, Marvel wouldn't bat an eye. At this point he is in this awkward position where he isn't an editor, because he doesn't want the position (it has been implied that it has been offered to him at least once), but he is "more equal" than any writer at Marvel. Yet despite this Bendis has fallen into the same trap with Moon Knight and that disappoints me. It doesn't surprise me, but it disappoints me.
