Moon Knight 24 – page 5

Another vintage eBay purchase.

The above page is from the classic Stained Glass Scarlet storyline – every issue from 15 onwards is a classic.

I think my first exposure to Bill Sienkiewicz’s art was the at-the-time much-hyped release of Moon Knight 1, which was the character’s fully-fledged solo title after graduating from backups in The Hulk magazine. I thought the art was okay but dropped the title after three or four issues as I dismissed BS as just another Neal Adams clone; not as good as Mike Nasser/Netzer, although better than practically every other one, but a Neal Adams clone nevertheless. This opinion illustrates just how good I am at predicting future outcomes. I would probably have concluded that Barry Windsor-Smith was merely a Jack Kirby mimic who would never amount to anything if I had been around to read his early comics efforts. It was only after Marvel gave Moon Knight a soft relaunch with issue 15 which was the first (together with Ka-Zar and Micronauts) ongoing direct sales Marvel comic that I gave the comic another try. Its direct-sales status had no effect on its availability in the UK as the usual newsagents/newsstands carried it as normal because dedicated comics shop were then, as now, few and far between in the UK. A year is a long time in comics and I thought the development in the art between issues 3 and issue 15 was stark, which together with BS’s turn in the A Hard Look at Violence issue of the black and white Marvel magazine Bizarre Adventures proved that BS’s art was on the move – every issue of Moon Knight’s art was better than the one that preceded it. The best was yet to come with The New Mutants, Elektra Assassin – the mixed media extravaganza which I think is BS’s high point as he and Frank Miller pushed each other to the limit and beyond of what superhero comics were capable of, which was funny and involving and even had an exciting car chase which is hard to do in a comic – Love and War, Stray Toasters, The Shadow.

It is an indication of how far Bill Sienkiewicz’s stock had risen in the mid-80s that when I saw him at the UK Comic Art Convention in 1986 he would, if you got him between drawing sessions, sign as many comics as you put in front of him but by the following year you had to queue/line up for 30 minutes plus to get him to autograph anything and then you were limited to only one item. A year is a long time in comics.