Base-Breaking Character: Marlene Alraune. Though Moon Knight doesn't exactly have a very big comics base to break, it's notable that if you look up her character on social media, the responses are very mixed, as few of them as they are. For some, she was a fun character in the early days compared to the female love interests of the time, especially due to her Action Girl tendencies and willingness to defend herself; as the franchise evolved, Marlene did too and thus people enjoyed how she grew to complement Marc's increasing insanity with her own messier mental health. For others though, she was a vapid and selfish character in the early days who bore all the worst traits of women of that era in comics, particularly how she treated Marc/Steven's mental health; as the franchise evolved, her constant absence was seen as evidence that she held it back and the book would do better to do away with her completely. There doesn't appear to be much middle ground between the two extremes, with those that like her really liking her, while those who don't really not liking her. It's rather telling that when the IP was adapted into a show, and Marlene was Adapted Out (or at least appearsdifferently), no one complained. Interestingly, for a franchise whose main character has a gay best friend he has genuine chemistry with, Marlene isn't hated by Frenchie/Marc shippers, who instead seem fond of the idea of a OT3 situation (likely because Marlene and Frenchie are both close friends who both suffered heavily due to their relationship with Marc).
The Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane aspect of Moon Knight's characterisation. For some fans, he's more interesting if you think he's just a normal man who's got serious Schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Khonshu is just a hallucination. Others however prefer the idea that he's really possessed by Khonshu and is acting as his avatar. Some writers play up the ambiguous nature while others (such as Warren Ellis and the writers following) instead go with things being explicitly the latter. For some, the former idea makes him a somewhat-positive example of mental illness in comics since while he struggles with it and is quite violent he's still a heroic figure, while others find the 'he's crazy' explanation to be somewhat overplayed by certain writers and see it as essentially Deadpool without the fun.
Lemire's run is this for some in part due to its Audience-Alienating Premise. Those expecting a street-level crime-fighting book featuring Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane elements are not gonna find it here, as it's actually a really long Battle in the Center of the Mind plot. And there's those that while they like the plot, they find it unnecessarily long given this lasted 14 issues; in other words, the whole length of the series was an overly long Battle in the Center of the Mind.
Crazy Is Cool: Moon Knight, a lunatic with split personalities who's flown around in a moon-shaped helicopter and regularly battles supernatural creatures.
In Shadowland, Moon Knight vandalizes his own taxi to get beat up and thrown in the dungeon, just to see where it is and how many people are down there.
In the Brian Michael Bendis series, he takes on Count Nefaria (a Thor-level supervillain) several times and eventually succeeds in removing him as the kingpin of Los Angeles. He does this largely by enacting schemes that would be insane to try and by listening to the voices in his head (granted, those voices are Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Echo). Unfortunately, the real Echo was killed in the attempt.
He also allows Count Nefaria to beat the crap out of him in a police station to give the Avengers time to arrive.
In the Warren Ellis series, his craziness has looped itself so that he's now one man (Marc Spector) and four incarnations of Khonshu, including "Mr. Knight" (a dapper white suit), a traditional crime-fighting outfit, and an anti-magic suit with—in Ellis' own words—a Giant Fucking Bird Skull for a helmet.
Franchise Original Sin: One of the reasons for Max Bemis's run becoming as disliked as it was is attributed to Bemis's decision to Retcon Jake Lockley into the violent persona, which clashed heavily with Jake's previous portrayals as a gruff but otherwise sociable and nice alter that was arguably much more heroic than Marc. That said, implications of Jake being the most violent alter were already a seed that'd been planted before Bemis came on board. Brian Wood's run introduced the mysterious "Lockley" persona that appeared in one issue who is heavily implied to be Jake, and he's a rather brutal Knight Templar in his one appearance. Jeff Lemire's run has Marc face Jake and confront him for his tendency to resort to violence. It's likely these interpretations that inspired Bemis to go the direction he did in the first place.
Gateway Series: The Ellis and Lemire runs for their own reasons. Ellis provided an anthology-like format for the series which allowed it to both be awesome and accessible to new readers without any continuity baggage besides the occasional lip service. Lemire, while embracing the continuity more, also worked to retell (and slightly reinvent) Marc's backstory which also allowed accessibility to new readers who don't know anything about the character.
Growing the Beard: After he stopped battling Werewolf By Night and became his own character.
Jerkass Woobie: Both Black Spectres. The first one had his life and reputation ruined by his stint as a supervillain then lost his son, driving him insane and sending him on another rampage. The second one is so desperate to be unique and special like Moon Knight he becomes a supervillain.
There exists a popular edited image of Moon Knight walking down some stairs, saying: "I know you're here, Dracula, you big fucking nerd. Where's my goddamn money?"◊ Frequently used by fans of works involving vampires, such as Castlevania. This eventually ballooned to memetically◊ making Dracula Moon Knight's Arch-Enemy in spite of the two never, if not barely, interacting. Amusingly, Jed MacKay's run establishes vampires are the sworn enemies of the Fists of Khonshu, so Dracula would be an Arch-Enemy for Marc... if he particularly cared about being a vampire hunter. He'll go beat them up if they go after him or those under his protection, but it's not really his long-term driving mission or anything, and he's perfectly willing to protect Vegetarian Vampires and recruit them to help him out.
Moon Knight's reputation for being an insane character has led to edits of panels featuring him replacing his dialogue with Ax-Crazy or Cloudcuckoolander traits. One of the most notable examples of this is the "Random bullshit, go!"◊ edit.
Edits of Moon Knight with cat ears.
My Real Daddy: Depends on who you ask. The most commonly cited are Bill Sienkiewicz, Warren Ellis, and Charlie Huston. Chuck Dixon is probably fourth. Jeff Lemire is also a new contender, for bringing back Marc's mental illness after Ellis did away with it, and playing with it to a mind-bending genius level. Jed Mackay has also thrown his hat into the ring with his well-received 2021 series.
Never Live It Down: Moon Knight has frequently interacted with other Avengers in relatively lighthearted adventures, and most of his stories are no more violent than any other Marvel superhero, yet the story where he carved off Bushman's face in self-defense, which the character himself notes is a low point he never wishes to return to, is cited by some as the key reason that any adaptation of the character has to be R-rated in nature.
Older Than They Think: As it turns out, the "let's get this bread" edit has more canon basis than most people realize. In his first appearances in Werewolf by Night #32 and #33, Moon Knight repeatedly refers to his payment for capturing Jack Russell as "my bread◊".
One-Scene Wonder: The gold knife-wielding, purple zoot suit-wearing henchman that Moon Knight briefly fights in issue 5 of Ellis's run.
The ending of the "God And Country" arc in the Benson run, with Moon Knight being forced to kill Carson Knowles to save New York.
Issue 6 of the Warren Ellis run where Black Spectre begins his all-out attack on Moon Knight and proceeds to utterly destroy almost everything Marc throws at him.
The scene where Moon Knight rips Bushman's face in issue two of Charlie Heston's run.
Issue five of Warren Ellis's run, in which Moon Knight steadily goes through an entire building fighting mooks one-by-one to save a little girl from her kidnappers.
Also, issue two of Warren Ellis's run, the fight with the sniper: "I'm not real."
Moon Knight being forced to kill Carson Knowles to stop his Evil Plan.
Echo's death in the Bendis run, which nearly sends Moon Knight flying over the Despair Event Horizon.
The start of the 2006 run, where Marc has literally hit rock bottom. No friends, no Khonshu, no equipment... just a drunken, drugged up wretch.
In a subtle Establishing Series Moment, the first issue of Ellis's run ends with Marc returning home to his dusty, derelict, empty mansion, alone with nobody but his alters and Khonshu. As Khonshu declares him his son, Marc looks as if he's on the verge of tears, like he knows that he can never escape this life after having driven so many of his loved ones away, as the finale of the run shows us.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Has had this from time to time with different factions of his fandom having less than favorable reactions to certain revamps in his personality and character direction.
A big reason for why the Max Bemis and Jacen Burrows run didn't succeed the way the last two runs did was in large part this. Even while they were Revisiting the Roots and ignoring the popular Soft Reboot runs Ellis and Lemire had written, there were a lot of changes from the older content. Notably, they changed Marc's split personalities' personalities; beforehand, Marc Spector was explicitly the violent and self-destructive one, which made things difficult for Marc since that was his primary alter, while Jake Lockley was a working class rough-around-the-edges Nice Guy who, during a time where he was the primary alter, was depicted as a much more typical hero and The Atoner for Marc's violence. Now for some reason, Jake was explicitly the Anti-Hero personality who had forced Marlene into a loveless relationship after getting her pregnant and never telling Marc, while Marc is written more like The Generic Guy in comparison. It didn't help that the run also gave Marlene serious Chickification, retconning her into a Damsel in Distress who Marc supposedly always had to save, rather than how she had previously been written as an Action SurvivorCombat Pragmatist who regularly pulled off Damsel out of Distress, who was In Love with Your Carnage but aware of how self-destructive it was.
Tough Act to Follow: Max Bemis and Jacen Burrows had quite the challenge due to coming off the heels of Warren Ellis and Jeff Lemire's runs, a difficulty Burrows acknowledged. This was not helped by the fact that they quietly ignored those previous stories in favor of Revisiting the Roots, even reviving Khonshu, whose death was a major event in Lemire's run.
Being a superhero with multiple secret identities has driven the poor guy into borderline insanity and he's constantly having to resist Khonshu's attempts to twist him into a Knight TemplarBlood Knight. He's considered C-List Fodder by most of the other superheroes and supervillains and is extremely lonely, to the point of begging to be part of the Avengers once (although it should also be noted that he also once literally burned his Avengers membership card). And then Echo got killed which almost sent him hurtling over the Despair Event Horizon. In short: it sucks to be Moon Knight.
Marlene and Frenchie. They stuck with Moon Knight for years despite his fluctuating mental state and suffered through terrifying ordeals before cutting off ties with him. Even worse for Frenchie, as he was actually in love with Marc, but Moon Knight's single-minded dedication to his work and instability meant he was unable to even realise this, never mind ever reciprocate; throughout the Benson run, Frenchie is repeatedly shown to be struggling with suicidal depression, and suffers alone because he doesn't tell anyone about it.
His speech to the second Black Spectre sums it up best:
Let me tell you a thing about me. People who love me suffer and die. I never want to be loved. That's why I always win.
Crawley in the original run. He became alcoholic, causing his wife to leave with their son, Jimmy. Years later, Jimmy became the Slasher, a villain who slashed homeless bums all in the hopes of finding his estranged father. In an altercation with Moon Knight, Jimmy fell to his death. Crawley blamed himself, for failing his family years earlier.
Values Resonance: The original Moench run has some surprisingly forward-looking elements given it was being serialized in The '80s. One of the more prominent examples is a story about a racist, xenophobic terrorist calling himself "Xenos" who attempts to kill a Japanese embassador due to his fear of America being invaded and polluted by foreign elements. He is revealed to be a cop who was a partner of one of Moon Knight's police contacts. In the wake of police brutality and racism undergoing more scrutiny, it's a very resonant story.
◊ Frequently used by fans of works involving vampires, such as Castlevania. This eventually ballooned to memetically
