#What the hell was the editor doing?

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Age of Khonshu, or as I like to call it: Oh no. Oh no no no no.

Age of Khonshu, written by Jason Aaron. 2018.

Who is Jason Aaron? A big writer at Marvel, he is best known for PunisherMAX (the ultras violent and non-marvel universe version of the Punisher), some runs of Thor (the one where Jane Foster becomes Thor), and certain runs with Wolverine: Weapon X. He also wrote Southern Bastard, which is a big name over in Image comics.

Another important fact? He was raised Southern Baptist that has since become an atheist.

That history out of the way, let's look at the sort of comic this is.

I have been putting off reading this little doozy for YEARS. Why? Three reasons.

This was not a good year for me personally. In fact, this was the start of some REALLY bad years to follow for the next 4 years.

I missed the original release and when I tried to find it to read it, no one had it. Not even the library. (This should have been my first clue).

This is a Marvel tie in event.

Now, I have ranted about these before and I'm going to rant about it again.

What is a tie in event? It's a big Marvel World event that attempts to do a large story-line that involves a lot of other big names (usually the avengers).

In Events, you have the main story line that involves the main character. So say, DareDevil is fighting a super ninja. You have the main story that takes place in DareDevil's comic "DareDevil vs. the super ninja" and in that comic, it's such a big fight that the avengers have to get involved, and maybe Dr. Strange and perhaps Brother Voodoo is getting a movie next spring so they want to showcase Brother Voodoo working with familiar faces so he's involved now too.

BUT. All these people involved also have their own comics running. They don't just want to keep going and ignore this big ninja fight that's happening. So then we have side event tie ins that pause their normal story-line to respond in some way to the event that is happening.

So Let's say Ms. Marvel has her story line going where she's been fighting some evil mob boss. She's suddenly going to pause that story. She'll suddenly come up on a hole hoard of evil ninjas and have to fight them for a single issue. But they don't want to loose steam with her evil mob boss because they have to get back to that in the next issue! So it turns out her evil mob boss HIRED those ninjas in some sort of attempted partnership with the evil super ninja. Just to highlight how evil the mob boss is!

Oh, and if you haven't been reading DareDevil or the Avengers or ALL THE OTHER COMICS INVOLED good luck trying to keep up with what's going on. So by the end of the event, you have to compile a LOT of comics together in a particular order so that you can fully understand what's going on.

Even worse? Sometimes the responding tie in comics that aren't really involved with the main story line try to solve the issue. So, going back to my example, Ms. Marvel not only defeats the ninja gang, but she discovers something amazing that will in the end help defeat the Super Ninja! She has single handedly helped bring it down! …In her own comic. It makes her look like the big hero and like she was crucial to the event….When in truth, she has nothing to do withthe main story line over in DD world and her little discovery won't have anything to do at all with how to bring down the Super Ninja in the end.

With me so far?!

If this sounds familiar to you, then congratulations, you may have read "Moon Knight Shadowland", which was infinately better than the main story line of Dare Devil Shadowland. (I'm still bitter about that one). Or the original Civil War saga. Or Seige. Or Dark Reign. Or Age of Khonshu.

Today, I'm here to talk about Age of Khonshu.

In which Moon Knight gets his own special event under an Avenger's title.

So how did they compile this event under an Avenger's title? We start with something that makes no sense to someone that has not been following the Avenger's comics.

Stepping further into it? This event follows directly after the 2017 BEMIS run. So we are moving from the worst run in MK history into Aaron's Age of Khonshu. The next comic after this didn't come out till 2021! That's a three year gap!

What's the story?

Mephisto (I hate Mephisto. He has been made basically into Marvel's version of the Christian Devil.) is messing with the time line and is going back in time to amass soul contracts with people and is slowly taking over the world or destroying it or building up hell. It isn't ever properly explained, but most evil things like this usually aren't.

For some reason Khonshu has seen the future of a world where Mephisto has destroyed it and done terrible things. So he puts these images into Marc's head. Marc, thinking Khonshu is out to fuck with him again (when isn't he?) tracks down Khonshu in one of his Moon Cult temples.

Khonshu tells Marc that he's terrified of Mephisto and Marc realizes that Khonshu isn't just fucking with him this time.

So he teams up and decides to…STEAL ALL THE POWERS OF THE AVENGERS AND GIVE THEM TO KHONSHU.

That's right. As someone told me, it's like watching a ten year old talking about how their character is the most powerful and can beat up all the other characters.

Moon Knight beats up Dr. Strange with the power of Khonshu and steals his magic. Then he beats up Danny and steals the Iron fist. Then steals the GHOST RIDER'S fire of vengeance. He goes after Thor on the MOON. Turns out Thor's hamer is made out of moon rock so Moon Knight laughs as he steals the hammer because he has the power of moon. He goes after the Black Panter and T'challa is just like "LOL No. My power comes from my ancestors. You can't steal that."

So they lock up T'challa in a pyramid.

YOU KNOW WHAT MARVEL MOVIE WAS COMING OUT IN 2018?! That's right, the first Black Panther movie.

So in this comic, it's going to feature heavily that Black Panther is super powerful and the hero of the story.

Giving Khonshu all these powers, he remakes New York into Khonshu World and imprisons anyone that fails to worship him, because he's an all powerful god that will stop Mephisto.

And he does fight Mephisto and kill him, but there are so many versions of him now, because he's the devil and you can't kill the devil.

And throughout this, Moon Knight worships and prays to Khonshu, calling him his god and how he's a follower, and believes that Khonshu is a powerful god.

The Avengers keep asking him to stop, that he's off his meds or something and mentally ill and they can help him stop Mephisto if he stops Khonshu.

Eventually Moon Knight realizes that Khonshu can't stop Mephisto and he's gone too far.

He prays to a different god and THE PHOENIX fire shows up and he becomes Moon Knight Phoenix.

He betrays Khonshu because now he is his own god I guess? Helping them take Khonshu down, he gives back all their powers and they lock Khonshu away in Asgard.

Now he expells the Phoenix from his own self before he becomes Dark Moon Knight and destroys the world.

Now the Avengers story moves on to them dealing with Mephisto in a later run, but Khonshu is defeated and that's the important part!

T'challa offers Moon Knight a place in the Avengers, rather than a jail cell in Wakanda for his crimes. Moon Knight turns him down and returns to a small part in Manhattan that he'd rather protect.

And that's how it ends.

Aside from the main story aspect of this particular volume of MK avengers, here are the MAJOR problems:

Throughout the entire run, there is HEAVY christian imagery and language.

They talk about the devil and how scary the devil is. They talk about Hell. They talk about angels. They talk about gods.

They especially show Moon Knight worshiping and PRAYING to Khonshu or Phoenix.

Moon Knight himself discusses fighting the Devil and going to Hell as a construct of the horrors he has seen and done.

2. Throughout the run, Aaron tries to pull out bits from Lemire. Referencing him and doing callbacks. It falls SO flat.

There is a scene early on where he does the "I am Marc Spector. I am Steven Grant. I am Jake Lockley. And we are Moon Knight" bit. But it's followed by a prayer to Khonshu because he is the Moon God's accolyte.

Later he talks about how Marc expelled Khonshu from his mind and had healed and was his own man again. He talks about how Khonshu had put horrors in his mind that made him ill.

He then talks about how he frequents a certain mental hospital.

Not only is he referencing Lemire, but he's taking it in the wrong context. This man read it and went "Yeah sure I got it" when he clearly didn't.

In Lemire's run, we see Marc dealing not just with how KHonshu used and abused him and how messed up he was, but we also see him coming to terms with his own mental illness and trying to understand himself. To understand that he himself had been abusive towards himself. His self harm attributes. His pushing people away. We see him learn to embrace the 'what if' aspect of after mental illness. We see doubt and we see room to heal.

In this it's just "Khonshu did it."

3. We're back to the mental health topic. While they DO acknowledge Steven and Jake twice, offhandedly, we don't see them. It's just MARC. And I find it hard to believe that either of them would either let Marc go this far off the rails to hurting his friends, but that they would go along with it without having a discussion or working as a team if they found it to be the only solution.

They also have NUMEROUS remarks from the others about "We all know Moon Knight is crazy but I didn't think he was this crazy". It carries on the old conversations that everyone in the Avengers and so on all see Moon Knight as mentaly unwell. Unfit. Crippled, even. He's not well enough to do things. He pretends to be a hero but we all know he's likely to melt down any minute and do something crazy, attitude.

And repeatedly he's told to take meds, go to the hospital, check himself in… Even T'Challa tells him "Wakanda has made great strides in Mental Health. We can cure you!"

Cure him from what? Trauma? Take away his DID? Or implying that he's some sort of other unwell causing him to not think straight?

It's these three things combined that just really set me off.

The absolutely disgusting use of Christian vocabulary and idealism to portray a Jewish character. Even if Marc isn't observant of Jewish beliefs, he is culturally Jewish and raised by a Rabbi. Unless he blatantly converted, he would not find himself worshiping and praying to another god. He wouldn't believe in the devil or use such language to describe Mephisto. He wouldn't talk about Angelic idealations or even Hell.

Then the blatant use of his mental illness to further how it's easy for Moon Knight to fall into such ways. Of course he did this. He's crazy. He'll do anything!

Of course he made his god Khonshu into an over powered dick.

I've discussed this before with a good friend, but there is a difference between following Khonshu and worshiping Khonshu.

I love the use of Yehya Badr to show this in MacKay's run. One has converted and religiously believes and follows Khonshu. The other follows a path that he himself set down as a result of his experiences and own needs.

Moon Knight never outright worships Khonshu (when properly written). Even in Moench's old run, he believed that he had been resurrected by Khonshu and therefore his power and life was in Khonshu's hands. This was more following Marc's thinking that he himself was nothing more than a ghost. Without Khonshu, it was more of an existential dread that he was nothing. Not that Khonshu was a god figure.

In later runs this translated into a sort of worship and it never should have. In Moench's run, Khonshu was some unknown force. Perhaps a god, perhaps a spirit, perhaps some form of something ancient that represents the moon and protecting those who travel by night. Considering the Marvel universe and such loose terms of applying all powerful beings under the phrase of 'god', it makes sense. Thor is technically a god. But he is not a god to be worshiped.

Moon Knight takes his own Jewish upbringing. He is here to cherish all life. To protect those who fall into the margins and cry for help.

What's most insulting is that this comic directly followed the run by Bemis. The one that was so laced with antisemitism and blatant disregard for mental health topics.... So we jump from blood libel and Nazism into fighting the actual Devil and praying to gods and worship.

This is not a good look, Marvel.

Here's the thing, we need a Jewish writer.

I don't mean someone that was formerly Jewish that converted to some other following. I don't mean an atheist that has a special interest in other religions (as Aaron claims he is). We need a born and raised practicing Jewish writer.

We need someone to use the proper terminology that isn't Christian based. We need Jake to speak more Yiddish. We need Steven to be seen putting money into the Tzedakah box. We need Marc to discuss his conflict with his Orthodox Rabbi father and his current path in life and how, like it or not, he has become the epitome of the Jewish struggle to exist.

I appreciate Mr. MacKay, but when his run is done and Marvel looks for the next Moon Knight writer, I'd really like to see a Jewish voice step in and not only respect their own people (despite what Marvel may tell them to do) but to also continue to represent and respect the mental health aspect of Moon Knight.

Maybe I'm asking too much? But this issue...

TLDR: Do not read Bendis, Bemis, and Aaron when it comes to Moon Knight.

[nowritingonthewall]

Oscar Isaac as Gomez Addams The Addams Family (2019)

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

let me get that for you.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[apostaterevolutionary]

You know what would be really funny, is if people came together to have an anti-crab day. A day where every user who joined prior to automattic’s acquisition logged off for 24 hours to show that yes, actually, older user retention is important and you should listen us just as much as new users

The users giveth, the users taketh away

[nero-neptune]

i've never had so many "there was an error autosaving your post" and fucking "ooops! it looks like there was an error trying to upload that image" messages In A Row, annoying the hell out of me!! this goddamn new post editor never stops making me wanna punch through my goddamn laptop screen!!

[gberkshire]

it’s unfair to ruby how long this has taken, which is the only reason he’s arranged it in the first place. to grayson, his family is quite literally blood – that’s it. he doesn’t owe them any personal information and they certainly haven’t earned the right to meet his girlfriend, but she’s a prominent figure in not just US but global politics so it’s hardly as if they don’t know who she is. he’d rather they form their opinions of her in person than from british tabloids, which are 100 times worse than their american equivalent.

he’s doing this for her, ultimately, because meeting his family is important to ruby. but he can’t help a pang in his chest as he looks at his beautiful girlfriend in the dress she’d carefully picked out for the occasion, believing his family doesn’t deserve to know her at all. granted, he’s often unsure that he entirely deserves it either, but at least grayson loves and appreciates her with the appropriate depth. it’s been so long since he’s had a proper dinner with his family that he has no idea whether they’re going to fake politeness or scrutinize her with all the power of a legacy spy family.

grayson takes her hand with a small, nervous smile, giving it a light squeeze. “we can still run,” he says, knowing she’ll take it as a joke but he’s not exactly joking. / @rmeriwether

[dicapriho]

pov you’re in a horror movie! 1. create your own look here 2. find out what role you are here

tagging: @hotgirlcoded @portraitofadumbassonfire @daenerys-targaryen-moved @flickerman @captainmarvels @tomlhardy

thank you @payidaresque for tagging me

[philomaela]

Good actors often give great performances and it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re great actors... good actors often give terrible performances and it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re terrible actors.

[torillatavataan]

Finland's Minister for Foreign Affairs Haavisto: Explosion at Kakhovka dam causes great risk and danger to civilians. It’s a huge humanitarian and ecological disaster and can have major impact on water supply. The cause of the explosion must be investigated. Finland ready to help civilians suffering from the damage.

[starryeyedtan]

Saw the leaked panels from DC vs Vampires and what the actual fuck?

Spoilers in my rant

A woman of colour who was a slave, was tortured mercilessly, was also a sex slave and not to mention was a fucking child at that time is shown as a fucking slave to her former lover in the dream of the white girl who is lusting after him, where he has Kory in bondages and is drinking blood but wants Barbra by his side??????????

What the actual fuck dc!!! So fucking pissed.

It's like I thought you couldn't go any lower to make me dislike a character and then you go ahead and do this?

They just keep degrading Kory again and again, insulting her, her fans and also this is a big insult to people who relate to Kory.

Despicable DC! Absolutely monstrous!

[origamiyoda]

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY PUTTING IN THESE NEW GHOST ADVENTURES EPISODES THATS MAKING THRM SO FREAKY

[dykefaggotry]

one more big paper and one more small paper left.....

[elxsticlxve]

≺ooc≻

I am, for a lack of a better phrase, going to go fucking bananas.

[vvanessaives]

looking at fenix is like i hate u i will make you suffer i want to see him get punched i would push him down a hay barrel (<thanks to farllee for this one) and then i will randomly zoom in on his face and

freckles.................babygirl......

[percontaion-points]

OVE chapters 45-47, Epilogue

The following book review contains violence & gang activity. Reader discretion is advised. 

Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions 

Chapter 45

“Cai Junli.” 

Juliette closed her eyes. The use of her birth name had the opposite effect that her mother had likely intended. Lady Cai wanted her to realize the severity of the situation; instead, Juliette felt as if her mother were addressing someone else, some false manifestation of the girl she was supposed to be. All this time, her parents had let her be Juliette—let her be wild, impulsive. Now they wanted the unknown daughter again, but Juliette only knew how to be Juliette. 

They sent her to America for years and years, and then they’re surprised that she’s a western girl with western ideals. 

“Communists who threaten the fabric of society,” her mother replied, her tone grave.

It’s not that I disagree with her about it. But the problem is that she talks about destroying society, yet they actively gave orders to literally murder thousands of people in the streets. 

“At this point I don’t even know if Dimitri is still intent on taking the White Flowers. With just about every gangster either dead or imprisoned or having fled the city, he’s far more concerned with building a base of power among the Communists.” 

“Then why did he take Roma? If not to end the Montagov line—” 

“It’s symbolic, I suspect. Kill the gangsters. Kill the imperialists. Kill foreign influence in the city.”

It’s fucking hilarious that he’s talking about “foreign influence” when Demetri is equally as foreign as the influences he wants gone from the city. 

When Benedikt turned around, his hair was ruffling in the wind, expression earnest and in such resemblance to Roma that it hurt her chest to look at him. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 45 summary: Now back home, Juliette calls her parents out on not giving a shit about the plague, on not giving a shit about how average citizens are shot down in the streets, on how her father would so cruelly issue orders to have the White Flowers gunned down the same way… And for what? Some blood feud that literally nobody fucking remembers how it even got started? And when her father says that they went wrong in “raising” her (which is a fucking joke because she was more raised by first Chinese nannies and then American teachers than her actual parents), she calls them out on that, too. 

Lord then demands that Juliette tell her mother what she did to Tyler. Juliette confesses about how she picked Roma over her shitfuck cousin, and although she feels guilty over hiding it, she continues to feel no shame in having actually murdered Tyler and those two goons. Lord tells her that since she’s choosing the white flowers, then she can go and “die among them”. Juliette begs her mother to tell her why they hate the white flowers so much, but Lady literally has no answers… Probably because she doesn’t know. Her mother then disowns her, too. 

Juliette takes a moment to drive for her shitfuck parents, but then tells herself to pull herself together. She knows that she can escape, but wonders what the point would be when she’s certain Roma is dead already. She then pulls out a goddamned grenade, because yeah. We’ve come to this already. 

As she pulls the pin out, Ben shows up on her balcony. Cause I guess it wouldn’t be Romeo and Juliette without a balcony scene. Despite it not making sense how he got in… Or the fact that it’s not Roma. Anyway, he convinces her she should use the grenade not to blow up her shitfuck family, but to focus on the monsters instead. Which is fair, because that’s honestly the more pressing concern. Juliette then puts the grenade BACK where she’d gotten it, and starts to get changed (it was pouring out, and she’s still quite wet). As she takes her clothes off, a random pill from Lourens falls out from her pocket. 

Chapter 46

“I ruined us all for a love not true,” Rosalind whispered. “At the very least, I can still save you.”

Chapter 46 summary: As Juliette and Ben go to where they’d stashed Rose, they talk about their plan. They know Demetri wants to haul Marshall, Roma, and Alisa in front of a crowd to murder them. And it’s likely that he’ll also have his monsters in their human-personas scattered around for protection. If they can force the monsters to transform, then the people gathered will panic. In the chaos, they can rescue their friends. 

They tell Rose that they’ll free her for everything she knows. At this point, I guess being left with her own thoughts as well as the news of the slaughter that happened is enough to convince her that she should simply tell them everything. Which isn’t much. She says that Demetri found the host bugs, and she provided the Frenchmen. She also says that it’s ethanol that triggers the transformation. They wonder where they’re going to find any in a city that’s been so badly looted, but Juliette reminds them that there’s also ethanol in gasoline. Rose hesitates when Juliette tells her to flee the city, but eventually goes. 

Rose then randomly goes to find her sister. Which IDK how she happened upon where Celia was, but whatever.She helps Celia walk away from the slaughter. 

Chapter 47

Behind them, with gasoline drenched into every square inch of the pavement, the explosion rang so loud and hot that all of Shanghai rocked with the blow.

Chapter 47 summary: Juliette and Ben steal a firetruck. Which is honestly a brilliant idea for spraying the crowds down. On the way over, Juliette explains that nobody gives a shit about some random “Korean” man, or Roma’s 12 year old sister. She’ll exchange herself for Marshall and Alisa, since she’s somebody that Demetri would be interested in. 

Juliette walks through the crowd and is instantly recognized in her signature flapper dress. Ben meanwhile redies the hose, and listens as Juliette announces herself to Demetri. Demetri naturally suspects a trick. Juliette convinces Roma to let her do this. In this, she “kisses” him, but this is a ruse to push the pill Lourens had given her into his mouth; it’s the vaccine. Finally Demetri agrees to the entire thing, if only because he’s tired of listening to her rattle on. As they untie Marshall and Alisa, Roma begs Marshall to take Alisa away from there. They run, and meet up with Ben. 

Demetri makes a sweeping villain speech, in which he basically announces that he does have a cure for the plague… but only for those who he seems worthy. Ben then starts to spray the crowds down, and the monsters transform and release the insects. Juliette and Roma get free, and Demetri wonders where he’d gone wrong in his stupid plan. 

But as Juliette and Roma stand among the chaos, they know that the city would never be free if they ran now. So they decide that they need to kill Demetri to end this once and for all. This involves lighting the vaccination on fire. Which I’m not sure that I follow, but sure. 

Ben barely manages to drive a car away from the square as the entire thing explodes. 

Epilogue

And she hurries forward, away from the canal, returning to Shanghai once more.

Epilogue summary: It’s been a year since the explosion. In the time since then, Alisa forged a marriage certificate for Roma and Juliette, since she’d overheard their vows to each other. She sent it to the presses, which set the city into an uproar. After all, if Juliette and Roma were so willing to ignore the feud, why should the citizens live in fear of it? After that, the gangs started to fall apart.

They had a double funeral for Juliette and Roma, their graves right next to each other. But the graves are empty, with them never having found a body. Alisa was insanely upset over the sight of the headstones with their names on it, and started screaming that they weren’t dead, they’d never found a body. But officials say that the fire burned too hot and too fast, and destroyed everything but the monsters… who had much thicker skin. 

After that, the nationalists ran the white flowers out from their home. Ben and Marshall were okay, since they were adults, but worried about Alisa. She meanwhile became a communist spy. (Zero mention of her father, but hey. He literally never had a name, so I’m not sure if I care.) She’s also working alongside Celia. Rose has been working with the nationalists, although I’m not sure if she’s a spy or not.

Celia and Alisa go out to the countryside to fold fake money for the dead in some Chinese tradition. As they start to return back home, Alisa thinks about how war is coming, and how unavoidable it is. But she also thinks about how she’s working to keep it back by keeping the memory of Roma and Juliette alive.