The Sun King is back and is decided to make Marc help him in the ultimate mission to defeat their common enemies.
This is not only an anniversary issue but also marks the conclusion of Max Bemis' run on the book. As I mentioned in the past, I believe that Bemis had really interesting ideas for the title but sometimes he didn't execute them or exploit them that well as a whole and unfortunately, I think this final chapter continues that trend.
The story is devoted to the return of the Sun King and how all of this is connected to Marc's uncle and his terrible actions, all of this culminating in a pretty action packed battle between Moon Knight and a bunch of Nazis. I would usually say that this is yet another attempt of Bemis to force social commentary into the title but at the same time, Marc's Jewish background kinda allows for this to happen and fighting cartoony Nazis is always fun.
The plot progresses at a pretty fast and sometimes erratic pace where Bemis implements most of the ideas he created during this run (mostly the ones from his initial arc actually) and create a resolution to brings closure to those ideas and the story as a whole.
But that's the thing, while I feel he brings closure to those ideas, I don't think it brings actual closure to Marc.
You see, Bemis touches many of the same elements that have been explored in the past, particularly during Jeff Lemire's run, concerning Marc's dementia but I don't think it tells more than that nor does it in a better way. I can appreciate that Bemis really admires Lemire's run (Lemire actually contributes with art duties here and I believe even has a mention in story) but I honestly think that Bemis misinterpreted some of Lemire's intentions concerning the nature of Marc's personality disorder.
As we knew at the end of Lemire's run, Khonshu turned out to be part of Marc's dementia, particularly the most toxic aspects of it and that's why Marc destroys it at the end. Khonshu's returning doesn't bother me since as I mentioned before, it makes sense for those negative feelings to come back one way or another. However, Bemis treats him like yet another wise and even kind part of Marc while Jake has apparently exchanged places with him by becoming more violent and problematic which is especially obvious because of the fact that he had an affair with Marlene without Marc's knowledge.
And yes, I still firmly believe that this constitutes rape.
Again, that doesn't make it necessarily a bad thing but I believe this should have been addressed to create a satisfying and even compelling exploration about how this changed everything concerning Marc. Sadly, Bemis never goes that far and doesn't even mention it and this is especially weird because he hasn't been afraid of touching other points like "toxic masculinity" which makes me suspect that he was more worried about buzzwords than actual problematic and complex scenarios.
Another point that I need to touch is how the Sun King mentions that Marc "wouldn't hurt a fly" when during Charlie Huston's run he cut Bushman's frikking face and killed him which cemented him as a violent antihero. Oh, and Marlene mentions here that Marc is "the worst boyfriend ever" which is fair considering that he was abusive to her (again, a violent act) but considering that as I said above, Marlene raped him, she's no one to talk.
And I almost forgot about Marc's recently-found daughter. This is yet another concept that I feel wasn't fully exploited since she's not even that relevant during this run aside from when Bemis needed to touch a few themes about dementia. She didn't even interact with Marc that much to justify her introduction unlike other recent child characters like Gaby in All-New Wolverine or Emiko in Green Arrow.
This is where I'm coming from. It seems like Bemis' run as a whole had potential but didn't quite reach it to the point of becoming actually memorable and there are many loose threads that I hope future writers are able to cover. Not only that but this comes with a lot of misunderstandings about the history of the character that contradict important parts of his life.
Paul Davidson, Jacen Burrows, Bill Sienkiewicz and even Lemire himself as I said, contribute to art duties and they do a solid job during their respective segments.
Other than that, this run gives me many mixed thoughts and I wish it would have been better overall.
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