Biography - Page 2
Marc felt driven to act in Khonshu's name, becoming a hero instead of a mercenary. He established a series of identities for himself to serve in his quest as the Moon God's knight of 
vengeance and justice. The money he had gathered from his mercenary work was parlayed into a new identity as millionaire playboy and financier Steven Grant, with his own mansion, a butler named Stephens, a cook named Netta, and Marlene ostensibly as his secretary. Spector had already been playing the stock market beforehand, and "Steven Grant" struck it rich by betting on a copper mining stock out of Africa. It just so happened that Marc Spector had trained guerilla freedom fighters in the same mountain range where the vein of copper was discovered. Grant gave him access to high society, the rich and the influential. Steven Grant prominently displayed the Statue of Khonshu from the Sudanese tomb in his mansion.
Spector also wanted to keep his ear to the ground, however, and so he created a second identity as New York City cab driver Jake Lockley. Jake often visited Gena's Diner, where Gena and her sons acted as his unofficial informants, as did Crawley, a well-spoken homeless man who was friends with Gena. Gena and Crawley knew Jake was more than a cabbie, but he paid well enough in tips to assuage their curiosity. Naturally, Spector also created a costume identity for himself, becoming the cowled Moon Knight. Frenchie remained at Marc's side, serving as his pilot, designer and mechanic of the new Moon Copter. [Marvel Spotlight (1st series) #28, Rampaging Hulk magazine #13]
[Note: Marc's childhood history of mental illness was a later development for the character, not fully spelled out until Moon Knight volume 8. As a result, early Moon Knight stories did not acknowledge that Steven and Jake had been personas Marc had struggled with for years. Moon Knight volume 7 presented the idea that Khonshu imposed "multiple personalities" on Marc's mind in order to make it "habitable" for the many aspects of Khonshu's own nature. Volume 8 tweaked the idea by saying Marc's pre-existing mental illness made him an ideal candidate as the avatar of the God of the Moon. Volume 8 also suggested Khonshu had been with Marc since his dissociation began as a child, slowly changing him and guiding him towards his destiny as Knight of the Moon. However, the dream-like nature of volume 8, seen through the lenses of Marc's own mental illness, makes it difficult to say for certain whether Khonshu was literally haunting Marc before his first resurrection, or Marc's mind was merely interpreting events that way metaphorically, in retrospect.]
When Marc learned of a group of criminal businessmen known as the Committee, he asked Frenchie to infiltrate the organization posing as a high society financer. He learned of their rather bizarre intent to capture an actual werewolf. As a member of the Committee, Frenchie suggested they hire Marc Spector, a mercenary he was "familiar with," to conduct the hunt for them. Frenchie then presented the costume of "the Moon Knight" to the Committee as if it was his creation for Spector to wear against their intended prey. Thus, the Committee came to believe they were responsible for creating Moon Knight. [Moon Knight (1st series) #4]
[Note: In the original story, the Committee DID hire Marc Spector and turn him into Moon Knight. The later retcon from Moon Knight's ongoing series inserted Frenchie behind the scenes in order to reconcile this with the Khonshu origin.]
Marc Spector approached the Committee and they explained the job to him. With his suit augmented by silver weaponry, he would be an ideal foe for a werewolf. They sent him to the home of Jack Russell, the werewolf they had targeted. Moon Knight fought with Russell and his stepfather but, when the sun went down and the moon rose, the rules changed. Still, Spector 
managed to defeat the werewolf and Frenchie also acquired Jack's sister Lissa and their friend Topaz as collateral. Once they delivered Russell to the Committee, however, Moon Knight came to realize Jack was essentially an innocent, despite his curse. Infiltrating the Committee wasn't worth the price, and so Moon Knight let the werewolf out of his cage and freed the girls. The feral werewolf wasn't one for team-ups, though, and Spector fled the Committee's warehouse with only a tepid peace with Russell. [Werewolf by Night (1st series) #32-33]
As luck would have it, a passing bite or scratch from Russell left enough "werewolf toxin" in Spector's bloodstream to affect him. Although he didn't become a werewolf, he did develop a degree of superhuman strength at night and under the light of the moon. Unfortunately, the ruse he played with the Committee meant there was a link between Marc Spector and Moon Knight in 
their files, files which wound up in the possession of Mr. Quinn, a.k.a. Conquer-Lord. Quinn had plans to manipulate the New York mayoral election and put his man Charles Thurston in Gracie Mansion. To keep Moon Knight from interfering, he had a spy named Merkins placed in Steven Grant's employ as his new valet. Moon Knight nevertheless intervened when crooked cops broke into Thurston's campaign headquarters at Conquer-Lord's decree, intending to frame the current mayor and rival candidate for the burglary. Still, when word spread Moon Knight had beaten up a troupe of undercover cops, he found himself public enemy #1.
As Spector tried to understand what trouble he had stumbled into, he had Marlene arrange for Steven Grant to attend a party at the mayor's home. Conquer-Lord himself was there, intending to assassinate the mayor since the burglary failed. Moon Knight's actions saved the mayor's life and won him a reprieve with the law, but Marlene tried to get involved and was taken hostage by Conquer-Lord. Back at his mansion to get a new lead on Quinn, Spector realized Merkins was a spy and forced him to flee, trailing the valet back to Conquer-Lord. He was able to rescue Marlene and capture Conquer-Lord for the police, clearing his name. [Marvel Spotlight (1st series) #28-29]
As he established his reputation, Moon Knight slowly introduced himself to other members of the super-hero fraternity. After crossing paths with some rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and a Life Model Decoy of Nick Fury, Moon Knight worked alongside the Defenders against Scorpio and the new LMD Zodiac. [Defenders (1st series) #47-50] The Maggia began investigating Conquer-Lord's 
files, and nearly uncovered the secret of Spector's many secret identities. To guard his secrets, Moon Knight joined forces with Spider-Man against Cyclone and the Masked Marauder's faction of the Maggia family. [Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man (1st series) #22-23] Finally, Moon Knight and the Thing teamed up against Crossfire, a brainwasher and former counter-intelligence agent Spector knew from his time with the Central Intelligence Agency. [Marvel Two-In-One #52]
Moon Knight continued his own adventures, investigating a series of murders connected to a statuette of the Egyptian God, Horus. The plot only grew more complicated as it involved terrorists, the Chilean ambassador and a hypertrichotic mastermind named Lupinar. The criminal financer had recovered Conquer-Lord's files on Marc Spector, making Moon Knight's secrets available to him. When Moon Knight tried to infiltrate the terrorists planning a nuclear strike as mercenary Marc Spector, Lupinar knew enough to play on Spector's sense of identity and sent one of his men posing as Moon Knight to confront them. Still, Marc overcame his self-doubt and doppelganger before hunting down Lupinar himself. Lupinar was a madman and, when his nuclear blackmail plot was foiled, he threw himself on the sword Moon Knight had been using to fence with him. [Rampaging Hulk #11-14]
In his next case, Moon Knight stalked a serial killer called the Hatchet-Man, who attacked nurses in New York City, strangling them before dismembering them with his axe. When details of the case came to light, Moon Knight realized the killer was Randall Spector, Marc's crazed and long missing brother. Spector had a tough time reconciling with this information -- even when he explained their last encounter to Marlene, Marc only referred to his brother as "Rand" and didn't tell her they were related. Remembering Lisa, he objected furiously to Marlene's plan to pose as a nurse to act as bait, but he couldn't dissuade her without revealing the whole truth.
Everything went wrong. Randall did attack Marlene, but overeager police officers interceded before Moon Knight could get to them. They opened fire and shot Marlene as the Hatchet Man used her as a living shield. Randall dragged Marlene into Central Park and cut her deeply in the back with his blade for good measure before dumping her in front of Moon Knight. Marc was forced to turn her over to the trigger-happy cops chasing them in order to pursue Rand into the 
park. During the chase, which echoed their last encounter years earlier, Marc finally revealed his identity to get Rand's attention and draw him out. Randall lunged at his brother repeatedly with his axe, and finally impaled himself on a tree branch. It was a tough night, but Marlene stabilized at the hospital before dawn and managed to pull through. [Rampaging Hulk #17-20]
One day, the body of Marc Spector's old CIA contact Amos Lardner was delivered to the Grant Mansion in a coffin. When an incendiary grenade was launched into the building for good measure, Moon Knight and Frenchie flew up to Montreal in the Moon Copter while Marc put Marlene to work reviewing his old files on Operation: Cobra. Together they discovered Charles LeBlanc had taken Cobra to the point of direct electro-stimulation of the brain to control others. Moreover, it was Amos's brother James who attacked Grant Mansion in New York, having been fed a story by LeBlanc in a CIA cover-up that Marc Spector was responsible for Amos's death. In fact, it was LeBlanc and Cobra who experimented on Amos until he killed himself. LeBlanc got a hold of James Lardner and performed the Cobra operation on him, turning the man into a killing machine under remote control. When LeBlanc tried to turn him on Moon Knight, however, Marc's truncheon smashed the Cobra control module, sending James into a berserker fury that led to the death of him and LeBlanc together. [Marvel Preview #21]
Moon Knight discovered drug dealers on the streets of New York wearing a familiar talisman, the death's head mask of Raoul Bushman. Marc knew this was Bushman's way of calling him out, and readied himself at Grant's mansion. Despite Marlene's concerns, he told her to stay behind as he prepared to step into the trap Bushman set for him. Moon Knight and Bushman confronted each 
other at Bushman's drug den, and Spector showed Raoul just how much he had learned about the value of terror. Moon Knight began beating Bushman to death, but Marlene arrived and stopped him. She had stayed behind once before when a man she loved went to confront Bushman, but never again. It was her father whom Bushman had killed, and she told Marc she didn't want him to kill in her name. He had always been better than Bushman, and now he had proven it by becoming a hero. [Moon Knight (1st series) #1]
On his next case, Moon Knight failed for several weeks to catch a skid row slasher murdering homeless men in the night. The case hit close to home when Crawley was cut up and barely escaped an encounter with the slasher. This case broke down the walls around Spector's identity as Jake Lockley, and he revealed his various guises to Crawley and Gena. Along with Gena's teenaged sons, Ricky and Ray, they became his official paid informants on the streets, and they began working closer than ever to catch the slasher. The case became even more personal, 
though, when the slasher was caught and Crawley realized his attacker was his own son. Crawley had abandoned his wife and child twenty years ago when his life fell apart and he crawled into a bottle on the streets. All those deaths were on his conscience, for his son had been blindly searching for his father among the homeless for revenge. When the slasher realized he had caught his father only to let him escape, he went mad in the courtroom at his hearing and escaped to the roof. Crawley's son threw himself to his death before Moon Knight could catch his friend's twisted son. [Moon Knight (1st series) #2]
Moon Knight crossed paths with the Midnight Man, a daring high society art thief who always struck at the stroke of midnight. Anton Mogart was quite rich himself, but as a thrill-seeking kleptomaniac he felt compelled to constantly add to his collections. In correspondence to the local newspapers, the Midnight Man challenged Moon Knight to find him and stop him before his next theft. Mogart even approached Steven Grant to arrange "protection" for his own collection from the Midnight Man, having drawn a connection between Grant and Moon Knight. When Moon Knight and Midnight Man grappled at the Mogart mansion, the Midnight Man was prepared to graduate from burglar to murderer in his quest for thrills. Marlene arrived to assist Spector and shot the Midnight Man as the two grappled on the roof. The Midnight Man fell into the river below, leaving Moon Knight with only his cape. [Moon Knight (1st series) #3]
The Committee resurfaced, still believing Moon Knight to be a rogue employee they had created. They hired five hitmen to eliminate Spector, named Ice, Boom-Boom, Dragon, Razor, and Bull. Frenchie had let his cover identity with the Committee go lax, and so he couldn't warn Marc ahead 
of time about the threat. Still, he survived Ice's first sniper shot and recruited Marlene and Gena's boys to track down the other hired killers. In the end, several of the hitmen turned on the Committee and the organization was wiped out by one of Boom-Boom's bombs. [Moon Knight (1st series) #4-5]
Moon Knight was summoned to the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucien by an old friend of Marc Spector, calling in a marker for having saved Spector's life on a job. He brought Gena's family and Crawley along, having promised them a vacation after the slasher case. A local plantation owner had been posing as the White Angel houngan, kidnapping and drugging poor locals to believe they were his zombie servants, forcing them to work the poppy fields for his heroin trade. The case resolved easily enough (well, relatively), but Marc was beginning to doubt himself. The 
superhuman strength he once received from the werewolf bite had faded away, leaving him only a normal man in the field. His multiple identities were starting to weigh on his mind as well, as his street contacts called him Jake, Marlene preferred Steven, and Frenchie still remembered Marc. Had he really been resurrected by the statue of an Egyptian moon god, or was it all in his head? Marlene also became more concerned about Marc's mental health, and started watching him more closely. [Moon Knight (1st series) #6]
It didn't help that Marc's next case took him to Chicago to foil a ransom scheme where the water supply was exposed to a poison that caused aggressive mania. Frenchie and Marlene succumbed to the water and Moon Knight was subjected to a hallucinogenic gas, causing him to believe he was fighting the Moon Kings on the surface of the moon and he, a mere Knight, was powerless. [Moon Knight (1st series) #7-8] The Titan priestess Moondragon also seized his mind around this time and forced him to attend a recruitment drive at Avengers Mansion. Moon Knight refused membership and left once his faculties were restored, but it was a bad time to be playing around inside his head. [Avengers (1st series) #211]
Marc's precarious mental state was tested when his old foes returned with a vengeance. Moon Knight learned Bushman had escaped custody and was back in action in New York. While Spector was hunting Bushman, however, the Midnight Man resurfaced and attacked the Grant Mansion. He retrieved his missing cape and kidnapped the butler Samuels. Significantly, he also 
stole the statue of Khonshu and brought it back to his lair. When Moon Knight discovered Midnight Man's subterranean sewer lair while looking for Bushman, Mogart destroyed the Khonshu statue in front of him, delivering a major psychological blow to Spector. Bushman then revealed himself and opened the floodgates to the sewer, hoping to drown Spector, Midnight Man and the captive Samuels. [Moon Knight (1st series) #9]
Moon Knight was nearly a broken man without his talisman, feeling the spectre of the Moon God leave him as the statue was destroyed. It was only Samuels' pleadings that got Spector moving to find an escape for them, though the Midnight Man was seemingly lost in the flood. In a daze, Spector wandered off after getting Samuels to safety. He collapsed into a delirium on the streets, talking to the head of the Khonshu statue he had rescued about how he was nothing now.
Marlene and his contacts spent days searching for Marc until they finally found him babbling to himself in Central Park. They brought him back to Grant Mansion, but his sanity and his confidence had escaped him. Marlene tried to bring him back to his senses by showing him a fully restored statue of Khonshu. She claimed she had made a fake of the statue for display purposes, 
keeping the priceless real artifact in storage. The relief restored Marc's courage, and he quickly returned to the role of Moon Knight, hunting down Bushman and once again turning him over to the authorities. Afterwards, Spector began to wonder if this was really the original Khonshu statue, or if Marlene had made a copy after the original was destroyed to soothe his unstable psyche. Ultimately, he chose not to press her for the truth. [Moon Knight (1st series) #10]