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This article, Marcus Spector (Earth-61615), is property of MarvelousMarty. |
Elias Spector (father; deceased),
Donna Perlman (mother),
Randall Spector (brother);
Marlene Alraune (wife),
Diatrice Alraune (daughter);
Lisa Shaw (girlfriend; deceased)
Defenders Vol 1 1
History
I am Moon Knight... The bearer of the mantle of Khonshu, the bringer of justice. I am vengeance of the night...
- — Moon Knight
- — Moon Knight
Early Years
Marcus "Marc" Spector (born summer 1980) was the rebellious son of a studious Jewish rabbi whose family ancestors had fled Europe in the 1940s to escape the Holocaust and settle in the United States at an impoverished neighborhood in Chicago. His mother left him when he was very young, when his younger brother Randall was an only infant, as her family — who despised her lover and the children that she conceived with him — married her off to a wealthier man in hopes of living a better life. Still, Marc refused to follow his father's footsteps as his calling; he could not understand why Elias never fought back against persecution. Instead, he became a prize-fighting boxer as early as nineteen, but when his father got into the ring one night to stop him, Marc unintentionally punches him out of frustration. Realizing for what he has done, he immediately apologized to his father, but his father left otherwise, ignoring his guilt-ridden apology.
Serving the Marines
A few years later, the still sorrowful Marc enlisted in the Marines instead of going home to his remorseful father who eventually plead for Marc to come home, but not before he left Randall to his father and remaining relatives while he promised to help them make a living in his service. After two tours of duty, Marc became a field agent of the CIA, wherein he worked with several people who would later with his later life, which included William Cross, Amos Lardner, Layla Sands, his then girlfriend Lisa Shaw. However, when Marc returned to his neighborhood, he would find his younger brother Randall Spector had experienced regression with his mental and emotional state, revealing that he grew up living a life of crime filled with victims of murder and torture in the absence of Marc when he left him at their relatives' place. As an act of retaliation, a deranged Randall kidnapped and eventually killed Spector's girlfriend Elisa by mercilessly shooting her to keep her from exposing a gun-running scheme for the gangs he had been working for.
Upholding his responsibility as a CIA agent, Marc continued his investigation with his colleagues until they eventually managed to infiltrate and apprehend Randall's gang and their gun-running scheme which Lisa had warned Marc before her untimely death. As the attack ignited a shooting in the gang's headquarters, Spector reluctantly threw a grenade back at Randall's gang the second one of the gangsters threw it to the agents, with the blast presumably killing Randall and some of his men while knocking out the rest of the gangsters for the authorities to arrest. In the aftermath of the shooting, both Elisa and Randall's death was another major factor in Marc's life that made him to start developing split personalities as time went by, due to the guilt and sorrow he was trying to repress for failing to save his brother from his descent into madness.
Mercenary Years
After the following traumatic events, a dispirited Marc eventually left the CIA after experiencing several cases of disillusionment caused by his personal tragedies. Around the brief time he tried to make a living by participating in dirty boxing, Spector took the chance to become a mercenary-for-hire, wherein he befriended his hirer Jean-Paul "Frenchie" Duchamp, who would end up becoming his professional partner and good friend after they met during one of his final days in the ring. Afterwards, they took on several assignments, mainly in Africa and South America, finding a state of ease and comfort for a few years. While working for the terrorist Raoul Bushman due to Marc's opportunistic mindset, the latter only became increasingly disturbed by Bushman's savagery and ruthlessness overtime. For the first time in his life, his conscience had awakened and it troubled him deeply. Then in Selima, Sudan, they stumbled across archaeologist Dr. Peter Alraune's excavation of an Egyptian Pharaoh's tomb. Believing there was gold and riches within, Bushman mercilessly murdered Alraune to plunder the tomb to make a fortune out of every valuable artifact they pillage. Sickened by Bushman, Marc tried to do the decent thing and helped Alraune's loyal personal assistant, the archeologist Layla Sands, while his fellowmen escaped the area using Raoul's helicopter, away from the terrorist's attention, and biding some of them to stop Bushman from accessing the tomb. Enraged with Marc's betrayal, Bushman tracked down, fought, and brutally beat Spector after tracking him down, before taking with Sands and Duchamp which subsequently abandoned Marc in the desert so that he would suffer before he would be left to die.
Left for Dead
Barely conscious and struggling for his life, Spector staggered to the ancient tomb for shelter. He was barely breathing and was already starting to accept his fate to die in the vast and dry desert until three strangers have arrived at the scene and found him, crawling in the sandy surface. The three men brought the fatally wounded to rest inside a sacred temple, near a statue of the Egyptian moon god and late warrior of whom they worship named Khonshu. Weakened from his fight with Bushman and the elements of the desert, Marc seemingly died from his injuries. The three reverends residing at the temple then carried his body into a room and lied him down to a reclined surface near the statue of Khonshu, and let him be treated with several traditional healing methods that Layla barely understood, making her extremely confused to what they are doing to him. The strange men had fed Marc with a mysterious herbal serum combined with him inhaling hallucinogenic dust from the tomb of Khonshu that revived Marc's consciousness, but not his physical body. This process however, had awoken his consciousness up inside a spiritual realm inside his mind, where he had met the avatar of Khonshu, for the very first time in a new chance in his life, something that Marc had never expected to live.
Rise of the Moon Knight
Marc Spector embraces his identity as the vengeful avatar of Khonshu, the Moon Knight
Upon Marc's first encounter with the Egyptian god and warrior's spirit in a series of dreams and visions, Khonshu sincerely asked him whether he wanted to avenge both the deaths of the people who were killed due to Marc's failure in protecting them, and to get revenge on those who continuously harms his living friends and loved ones in exchange for an unspeakable ancient power that he would be possessing. Bearing the Egyptian god's embodiment of vengeance, Marc accepted Khonshu's offer, to which he then suddenly wakes up into his physical own body with the psyche and spiritual hunger for vengeance, once again, giving him another chance to live. Finally having found a purpose in life since the tragic incident, Spector applied himself to the calling of the late Khonshu. He, with the help of his old pal Frenchie as well as his associate and eventual on-again, off-again flame Marlene Alraune (Layla Sands' real identity), would later move to New York City after the two would escape Bushman's clutches once he presumed Marc's death. With attempted recovery rendering him to be resilient enough to cope with trauma, the combined efforts of his multiple personalities had developed a highly-advanced combat suit, equipment through the amassed fortune of all his personalities' professions, Marc was able to reembody the previous heroic persona of Khonshu during his years as the legendary warrior, becoming the vengeful vigilante known as Moon Knight of the modern age.
Bushman's Return
Ever since the fallout of Khonshu's possession had subsequently saved his life, Marc, Layla, and Frenchie were eventually rescued by his former CIA teammates, and eventually returned to New York and live normal life there in peace and tranquility with Layla, for he was no longer certain that he would ever want to continue the will of Khonshu as the Moon Knight. Unfortunately, this realization would prompt Marc to sacrifice the future he wished together with Layla, letting his split personalities take over in the next few years of his life, with Spector's personalities living different lives and time zones across the world, notably becoming the hospitable, contented religious devotee and later rabbi Yitzak Topol in Europe, the pushover and selfless yet repressively volatile New York cab driver Jack Lockley, or the British affluent financier Steven Grant. In his attempt to suppress Khonshu's calling, Spector allowed his personalities to live their lives on different schedules which he had routinely taken notes through their recorded messages, albeit none of his civilian personalities were aware of the eerie supernatural life he had gone through in the past few years as Marc Spector or Moon Knight.
However, both the unstoppable unified outcries of his multiple personas, begging to know the truth of who they really were in their past life, worsened by the psychological and supernatural nightmares induced by both his trauma and Khonshu's spirit, and the eventual return of his old enemy Bushman who decided to briefly but devastatingly plague the streets of New York City through violence and connections against his former allies, notably Duchamp and Layla, had forced Marc to tell the truth to his split personalities so they could settle their differences by communing with the spirit of Khonshu, and thus, allowing Spector to once again don the sacred suit as the Modern Fist of Khonshu and return to New York for the first time in a while to save his comrades from Bushman and his men, subsequently expanding his pursuit of vengeance and justice across the wide city that never sleeps, starting with tracking down and hunting Bushman and his affiliates in crime.
By that significant moment of clarity and union between his personalities, only Marc's waking nightmares had slowly stopped, lately but truly realizing the reason behind the terrifying visions he has been dreaming every night were consequences of his failures and responsibilities to comply the will of Khonshu, as well as the latter's episodic nightmares during the deity's previous life as a part of the Ennead in the astral realm of Celestial Heliopolis and his later life during Ancient Egypt. His split personality, however, would still find sympathy and understanding from Marc's best friend, Frenchie Duchamp, and the homeless man and street performer named Bertrand Crawley, who eventually befriended Marc and his split personalities, originally with Jake Lockley, to the point that he ended up becoming a trusted informant for the Moon Knight.
Around the late 2000s, the Moon Knight had few several encounters and alliances with the other vigilantes and heroes across New York City, such as the Daredevil, Black Cat, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Jessica Jones. In spite of Moon Knight's lone wolf personality as a vigilante, he nevertheless agreed with the heroes to form a single alliance, perhaps a team, in order to keep the streets of New York safe and sound from the clutches of crime and evil that could overwhelm them if they dealt with it on their own. From time to time, the team was eventually dubbed as the Defenders both by themselves and their growing admirers, by those who have seen them take down various criminal activities in action.
Chitauri Invasion
Moon Knight as he teams up with the heroic Defenders of New York
After a year or two of continuing his brutal but merciful mission of vigilantism across the state and cities of New York as the Moon Knight, Marc was then courageously obligated to join the heroic fight when the Earth was in great peril due to the arrival of extraterrestrial threats around the summer of 2010, the Knight resumed the fight when the Earth was in great peril due to the arrival of extraterrestrial threats, led by the dangerous unearthly race of creatures, known as the Chitauri. As a result, he coincidentally joined forces with other the street-level heroes to reform the heroic team Defenders, once again to fight-off the descending aliens, alongside the S.H.I.E.L.D. based heroic team known as the Avengers. With the best efforts of both parties, the Chitauri Invasion was interrupted and subsequently intervened, and the Earth was saved, thanks to it's mightiest and most fearless heroes who helped defend it.
By The Hand's Palm
Throughout the entire journeys of the Defenders, the heroic team has never face a stronger and a more villainous organization in the world (besides the Kingpin's entire Criminal Empire) than the powerful palm of the fingers of the Hand, upon their devastating re-emergence, as the five fingers had rise up throughout New York City around the year 2014, in order to tried to catch the Iron Fist so he would open the gates for the substance, the Hand's long-time elixir of immortality. Due to this, the Defenders were reformed in order to save Iron Fist and stop the Hand from destroying the majority of the city in the process.
However, in the midst of their battle against the Hand, Marc was greatly knocked down by one of the Hand's fingers, whose might and skills rivals his, who temporarily captured him by the orders of hypnotic cultist Arthur Harrow, who had his mind under their will by manipulating most of his split personalities, forcing Marc to turn against his own teammates during the climax of the mission against the Hand, as the Moon Knight was hallucinating his fallen enemies. Marc was only then snapped from his state of coercion after a brutal brawl mainly with his fellow defender Black Cat, who successfully have gotten rid of his coercive state after getting the chance to punch him so hard, it threw him into a brick wall of a building, in which his head hit the hard wall, temporarily rendering him unconscious for almost a minute before coming back into his senses and reuniting with his team. As the fingers of the Hand had reached for the substance deep underground, trying to collect all of the remaining samples of the substance have only to lead them to their doom, when the now reformed Defenders buried the rest of the leaders under the ground with an explosion on the very building the Hand had built as their secret headquarters, leaving their fates unknown in the meantime. The fingers might have been defeated by the heroes for now, but later on, the Hand's survival would be proven, as the organization itself continues to thrive and survive, even without their strongest "fingers" (leaders), who would still return, later on.
Mystical Escapades
A year since the end of the global Ultimate War wherein he fought with the Defenders in early 2015, followed by the divisive and controversial Superhuman Civil War in 2016 which resulted to the heroes going their separate ways for a while, Spector went off the grid and as the Moon Knight, he continued his search for Arthur Harrow and his cult, who previously taunted to Moon Knight their fair share knowledge about Khonshu due to their worship and loyalty towards the Egyptian goddess Ammit, who had a long lasting rivalry with Khonshu in the past. Clashing against his new foes, the Knight collaborated with his long-time friend and informant Crawley, reuniting with Frenchie and (eventually) Marlene, later realizing that his crusade had once more returned into a more mystifying journey across parts of the globe when he started to cross paths with notable sorcerers from the Masters of the Mystic Arts, as well as teaming up with the vampiric Daywalker Blade, and with his allies, the Knight began to face off against zealot followers of various creatures that were once thought as myth and legend in history, yet the ghost of Khonshu had seen some of Spector's newfound adversaries as nothing but familiar faces, stemming back to Ennead and other gods of which Khonshu had encountered in his past deity and mortal warrior life.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Divine Elixir of Khonshu: As a testament to the human brain, Moon Knight's state of mind has always caused his powers and abilities from Khonshu to come into question, as he himself would admit at times that most of his memories were not a reliable source. It's been stated that he may suffer from a madness so powerful it can only be describe as magic, although it was later revealed by Doctor Strange to be a mysterious and divinely mystical serum similar to the Heart-Shaped Herb of the Black Panther, to which such herb was bestowed to the Wakandan warriors by the Panther God Bast, one of the Ennead and Khonshu's half-sibling. Khonshu's Elixir was synthesized by some kind of ancient alchemy that was originally practiced by Heka, the goddess of magic in Egyptian culture, someone who Khonshu was acquainted with in the past. This elixir was revealed to be the physical source of all of Khonshu's powers in the Earthly realm — due to his banishment from Heliopolis, the realm of the Ennead — as well as other non-mutant Egyptian warriors' powers during the Egyptian times when he was both revered as a warrior and protector of Egypt, eventually restoring his reputation of being idolized by many as a "moon god" even as a reincarnated mortal, before he and his fellow warriors were killed by the nigh-godly mutant Apocalypse as they fought him and took down his reign of terror in Ancient Egypt, sacrificing their lives to take down his Four Horsemen and severely weaken Apocalypse.
- Suit Transformation
- Superhuman Strength
- Superhuman Speed
- Superhuman Stamina
- Superhuman Senses
- Superhuman Agility
- Superhuman Reflexes
- Superhuman Durability
- Moon's Might: At night, Spector's speed, strength, and toughness increased as the moon waxed, and decreased as the moon waned, although it has been later changed after the serum has been structurally and molecularly been modified by the magic of Doctor Strange and genetic alterations of Mister Fantastic. His powers and abilities can still be increased through the reliance of the moon, the only difference now is that his powers can always be used in his own will anytime (day and/or night) as long as he is willing to, without draining it, although during a comparison and demonstration of his powers between daytime and nighttime consistently shows that his power levels during the latter was still virtually superior.
- Astral Vision
- Night Vision
- Shadow Walk
- Enhanced Healing
- Telepathic Immunity
- Adaptive Personality
- Pain Resistance
- Fear Inducing
Split Personalities: As a consequence of having become Khonshu's avatar, Marc Spector has developed the following several personalities and alter egos throughout his life and career as a vigilante. Spector cycles through these aspects, and his brain applies identities to them in order to explain them. The following split personalities are:
- Jake Lockley - Marc's taxi driver, chauffeur, or generally driver-for-hire persona; originally and mostly based in New York City; known for being a pushover type persona due to how approachable yet somewhat clumsy he gets with his customers only to have a darker side of sometimes having violent tendencies when stirred up in a mess with criminals wherein he was reluctant to be as well as to save innocent people from said criminals
- Steven Grant - Marc's financier identity and persona which became the greatest source of his wealth and income; mostly based in London, England; also distinguished as the "playboy millionaire," "seemingly narcissistic," and "occasionally-alcoholic" persona
- Maya Burr - Marc's young, but precocious, feminine persona serving as one of his inner motivators, rooted from the memories of women in his life (e.g. his mother, his late girlfriend Lisa Shaw); the only persona not used by Marc as a civilian identity besides Moon Knight
- Yitzak Topol - Marc's faithful, hospitable, and religious persona, rooted down to his Jewish heritage and his memories of his father as a compassionate yet sometimes rigorous rabbi, teaching doctrines and principle about his religion, rooting from the memories of his late father; mostly based somewhere in Western Europe
- The Moon Knight, Avatar of Khonshu, - Marc's superhero alter ego and vigilante persona; originally summoned in Egypt; sometimes splits into Mr. Knight, who is a cunning, enigmatic, and strategic personality, serving as a detective variation of the Moon Knight who originated in London, England
| Power Grid [1] | |||||
| Intelligence* |
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| Strength* |
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| Speed* |
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| Durability |
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| Energy Projection |
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| * Heightened stats when empowered by the Moon's Might | |||||
Abilities
- Multilingual
- Indomitable Will
- Expert Pilot
- Skilled Detective
- Interrogation Expert
- Expert Marksman
- Weapons Master
- Master Martial Artist
Strength level
Class 15+
Weaknesses
- Mental Illness
- Dissociative Identity Disorder
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Paraphernalia
Equipment:
- Moon Knight's Suit
- Glider Cloak
- Carbonadium Armored Vestment
- Avengers Identicard
Transportation:
- The Moon Jet
- Several Flying Drones
- Modified Limousine
Weapons:
- Knight's Arsenal
- Crescent Darts
- Knight's Truncheon
- Crescent Launcher Pistols
- Knight's Energy Shield
- Knight's Web-Shooters
- Knight's Claws
- Silver Cestus
- Knight's Ankh
Notes
- No special notes.
- ↑ Modern Comics: Moon Knight Vol 1 5
Trivia
- No trivia.
See Also
- Appearances of Marcus Spector (Earth-61615)
- Character Gallery: Marcus Spector (Earth-61615)
- Quotations by Marcus Spector (Earth-61615)
Discover and Discuss
- Search News for: Moon Knight · Marcus Spector · Marcus Spector (Earth-61615)
Links and References
- None.