InsaneJournal

DKR and Moon Knight meta
So, I've been all over the map lately. My issues have popped out of the corner and eaten my brain, especially "hai i'm your lifelong undiscussed gender issues. let me try and take you over." I hadn't taken the time to read How not to write a hero, and I almost didn't. But I'm so very glad I did. Te has gotten Miller's Batman perfectly: he is the true Nation, a Nation of embedded, romantic ideals of a time that never really existed. Miller's Batman, as The Nation, doesn't need to think or question itself, because it knows. To deviate from the ideals is to risk giving in, which the weak, the thinkers, the Supermen, the women do.

And on Miller women, it's so nice to see someone point out how scarily unsexed and non-gender-coded Carrie is. Just like how most people can be comfortable with a queer person in media only when he/she/hir is unsexed, Miller can only be comfortable with Robin and Carrie when she is not so much a she as an idea. And when Miller tries to have it both ways, he fails miserably. Women, unable to fully devote themselves to The Nation, are to be mastered and Batman needs one to keep him relevant. Yet Carrie was never an actual sexed person in DKR, which induces a radical, ridiculous speed change of characterization. Because you can't give an idea or concept gender. You can't make an idea into a person.

But mostly, it hit my Moon Knight buttons. And why I love current Moon Knight, which is close to Miller's noir Batman but so radically different. Moench's Marc was much more of a Batman clone, with Marlene to keep his impulses in check and a playboy image to maintain. The height of Batman ripoff-ness came with the Dixon/Kavanaugh run (which I still refuse to finish). The Marc who walked away from Scarlet without answers, who worried about his world and his quest to make up for his mistakes, who walked away from his father's pacifism yet ended up always solving the world's problems with violence, was gone. Instead we had this person who looked a lot like Batman with a brother, a young sidekick (who can also be called crazy!android! Jason Todd), and a lot of mystic mumbo-jumbo.

Huston's take, in my opinion the closest to an evolution of Moench's original, is a DKR protagonist. He's an angry, frustrated, beaten man who had to bring himself back from the bottom. But his story isn't ultimately heroic, and it's not meant to be. Simply put, Marc is a huge fucking asshole, and everyone knows it. Marlene avoids him, Frenchie no longer speaks to him, his staff put up with far too much abuse, and the people who do support Marc's cause (Ricky and Frenchie's boyfriend Rob) are people used to violence, people who are angry and want vengeance. There's a very telling scene where Rob says he supports Marc because he wants evil people to know what it feels like to hurt. His reasons are selfish and self-serving.

Because when Marc beats an abusive husband with his own belt, it's not heroism. It's Marc trying to heal the holes in himself when the Profiler tells Marc Marlene doesn't love him anymore. There are brief flashes where Marc expresses basic human decency. But they're usually overshadowed by Khonshu's insistence on violence and lots of it. And Moon Knight is a violent, bloody book.

In a nutshell, Moon Knight is Miller's DKR/DKSA done right. With a strong, loving, and sensitive gay relationship.