Biography - Page 6
In a series of terrorist attacks against the Statue of Liberty and Grand Central Terminal, Moon Knight and Ghost Rider teamed up against Plasma and her minions. The terrorists were a group known as the Knights of the Moon, who claimed to be the true fists of Khonshu, and that Moon Knight was a blasphemer in the name of their god. These accusations haunted Marc, for he had not heard Khonshu's voice directly since their conflict over the Phantom Rider. He began to doubt whether he had dedicated himself to a god who truly desired justice, or merely vengeance. And, with that, whether his own presumed redemption from heartless mercenary to crusading knight was valid. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #25]
Marc's crisis of faith caused him to soften his tactics to a degree. He began giving second chances, hoping to redeem criminals in order to prove his own redemption at Khonshu's feet was 
legitimate. Unfortunately, Stained Glass Scarlet returned to Moon Knight's life in the fits of her own crisis of faith. The former nun and actress who killed her own son to save Marc's life began to feel as if she was beyond redemption. She vacillated between wanting to burn or wanting the world to burn with her.
Somehow, her faith in God and Marc's connection to Khonshu interacted, creating a psychic link between the two vigilantes. Scarlet sought to get Moon Knight's attention by attacking those close to him. Gena had returned from Texas to reopen her diner, but Crawley had fallen back into the bottle without Marc's patronage and regular work. Scarlet shot Crawley and blew up Gena's diner before kidnapping Frenchie as well. She drew Moon Knight to a rendezvous at the Brooklyn Bridge and literally stabbed him in the back as he tried to reach out to her. Moon Knight attempted to save a woman who didn't believe she was worthy of saving, and she nearly killed him in the process. Stained Glass Scarlet began fire-bombing New York as Marc recovered. He caught up to her as she tried to finish off Crawley in his hospital room. He hunted her back to the Brooklyn Bridge, but this time Scarlet threw herself from the bridge, despite all of Moon Knight's efforts to convince her she was worth saving. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #26-31]
Marc's new outlook on life led to a quarrel with Frenchie, still a career mercenary who didn't believe in using kid gloves with opponents. Their disagreement grew when both were targeted by the Hobgoblin. Jason Macendale was a former partner of theirs who turned to costumed villainy 
before being possessed by a demon. The Hobgoblin creature was part of a sect of demon zealots trying to earn their way into heaven by killing sinners, and Macendale's parasitic partner had specifically targeted mercenaries. Hobgoblin was more unstable than usual this time, sporadically switching between Macendale and demon forms. Marc's compassion for Macendale continued leaving him open for when Hobgoblin resurfaced. It was only when Hobgoblin threatened Marlene that Spector lost his cool and beat the former mercenary senseless. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #32-33]
Frenchie finally tracked down Killer Shrike, the super-villain who nearly killed him months prior. He was prepared to face him alone as a matter of pride and honor. Moon Knight initially tried to intervene but, when Jean-Paul told him to back down, Spector relented and allowed him to finish the fight on his own terms. This adventure went a long way towards repairing the rift between Marc and Frenchie. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #34]
Returning home to Spector Mansion one night, Marc and Marlene arrived in time to watch the building explode in a series of firebombs. Marc entered as Moon Knight and found Frenchie buried in the wreckage of the Moon-Copter's hangar. As he got Frenchie to safety, Moon Knight 
found Marlene beaten unconscious outside, fallen next to a Hatchet Killer mask, the same his brother Randall had worn years ago. He pursued the attacker and uncovered a hidden church for the Cult of Khonshu and their Knights of the Moon. At the center of the church was the priestess Nepthys and his own brother, Rand Spector, alive and well despite their fatal final encounter in Central Park. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #35]
Randall Spector told an elaborate story about the secret history he and Moon Knight shared without Marc's knowledge. Years ago, Rand had been working with the revolutionaries in the Sudan gunned down by Spector and Bushman just before they attacked the Tomb of Seti dig that had been run by Marlene's father. Randall was convinced his brother saw and recognized him among the revolutionaries, and grew bitter towards Marc as a result. Barely alive, he stumbled towards the Tomb of Seti from the opposite direction of Marc on that fateful night. By falling through a secret passageway, he uncovered some hidden scrolls of Khonshu and secretly observed Marc's resurrection at the feet of Khonshu's statue.
Rand survived the desert and made contact with Sandhal Swarn, a CIA agent and his former lover. She claimed to translate the scrolls and discovered a secret history of two Khonshus which once battled to be dominant. From the scroll, Swarn inferred that Rand could steal Marc's role as Knight of the Moon under a certain celestial alignment. They began a years-long plan to carry out this goal. Swarn had been part of Charles LeBlanc's CIA brainwashing program, and so they used 
plastic surgery and behavioral conditioning to make a hapless dupe believe he was Randall Spector. It was this man who became the Hatchet Killer and died fighting Moon Knight. In her new guise as the Priestess Nepthys, Swarn and Randall organized the Cult of Khonshu, spreading word of the two Khonshus in order to empower the Knights of the Moon to act against Moon Knight and follow their own nihilistic interests.
Reeling from these revelations, Moon Knight had to stop the newly-arrived Punisher from killing Rand before he could confirm any of these allegations. Castle had tracked a cache of A.I.M. weaponry Nepthys had acquired for the Knights of the Moon, and intended to eliminate those involved regardless of Spector's personal connection. They formed an uneasy alliance as Rand and Nepthys escaped, tracking them to a second location where Nepthys began a ceremony to infuse Randall with "lunar energies" and the power to subvert Marc's role as Fist of Khonshu, declaring himself Shadowknight.
As Shadowknight, Rand now seemed impervious to harm. He was intent on beginning the Trials of Khonshu to kill Marc and fully claim his position with the Moon God. Moon Knight and 
Shadowknight were separated from the other combatants, facing each other in Central Park where Randall "died" last time. Marc finally managed to breach Rand's impenetrable skin with an Adamantium truncheon, but he was unwilling to kill his brother. Punisher killed Nepthys and most of the Cult of Khonshu, leaving Shadowknight to escape into the dark. From Nepthys's scrolls, Marc learned that the two brothers Khonshu had fought over the issue of Justice versus Vengeance, and realized he had been serving a God of Justice all along. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #36-37]
Six weeks passed. While on the run, Randall degenerated into madness, becoming a revised version of the Hatchet Killer his doppelganger had once been. Marc concluded that there were no actual "lunar energies" involved in Nepthys's ceremony -- rather, she had made Rand impervious to harm via the same chemical treatments and conditioning her partner LeBlanc used years ago for his own brainwashing scheme. Without Nepthys to properly maintain the process, however, Rand became unstable and psychotic.
Finding a renewed sense of purpose from serving a God of Justice, not Vengeance, Marc neglected Frenchie and Marlene as they recovered into their hospital in order to re-imagine his whole Modus Operandi for fighting crime. Spectorcorp purchased an entire city block in Manhattan of rundown warehouses, secretly renovating them into a massive interconnected complex that became Moon Knight's ShadowKeep. Marc used technology to expand upon his arsenal, creating more Adamantium weaponry and personal body armor, with wrist launchers for his crescent darts and various other new toys.
His final innovation was the Shadow Cabinet, a sprawling network of informants to support Moon Knight's endeavors, encouraged to assist Spector through payment, blackmail or genuine altruism. The Shadow Cabinet met via holographic exchanges at the ShadowKeep, with members using special rings to send and receive their telecommunication. Members used codenames to protect their identities, and many were even in the dark as to the identity of their employer. Regular agents included Sigmund, a psychotherapist; Scout, a television journalist; Sheriff, from 
the local police; Shark, from SpectorCorp's legal team; Psycho, a maximum security inmate; Junior Birdman, a conspiracy theorist and dark 'net informant; Penny Anne, a corporate board member; Cover Girl, a street kid and gang leader; Mercy, a physician; Stash, an archivist and collector of rare documents; Don G, with the local mafia; Fingers, an accomplished thief; and even Skitter, a Morlock.
The Shadow Cabinet analyzed Randall's killing habits and determined he was building up to one big, specific kill, which Marc realized meant Marlene. Moon Knight confronted the fractured Shadowknight at Manhattan Polyclinic Hospital only to find Marlene had already checked out and Frenchie was permanently paralyzed from the waist down because of Randall's firebombs. The Punisher arrived as well and Randall tried to cause a distraction by throwing Frenchie out the window. Moon Knight caught his friend while Punisher remained focused enough to shoot Rand 
out the same window. Marc had to choose between holding onto Frenchie and trying to save Randall, and found it was no choice at all in the end. Still, Frenchie found it hard to forgive Marc for leaving him alone to convalesce for six weeks while hunting his brother. He accepted his role as mechanic and technical support for the new Moon Knight, but Marlene would not be returning to Marc without some time alone first. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #38]
SpectorCorp received a startling personal invitation from Doctor Doom for Marc Spector to attend a gala at the Latverian Embassy. The gala was attacked by the Sensor Squad as Victor von Doom bravely defended his guests. Afterwards, Doom and Spector discussed land in the contested region near Latveria recently purchased by SpectorCorp, and relics recovered from that site. Claiming the attack originated from patriotic hardliners targeting Spector for this purchase, von Doom offered to buy it back from SpectorCorp. Highly suspicious of Doctor Doom's intentions, Marc refused to deal with him. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #39]
Sure enough, the Sensor Squad were actually working for von Doom. Reacting to a news report from Scout that the Latverian artifacts were housed in Marc Spector's private office at SpectorCorp, the Sensor Squad attempted a burglary and were captured and defeated by Moon Knight. Hoping to settle their business once and for all, Moon Knight conspired with the Shadow Cabinet to break into the Latverian Embassy, using Stash to acquire the building's blueprints, Fingers to make his assessment, and Cover Girl to "innocently" test the security as a delivery girl. For added leverage, Moon Knight visited Mr. Fantastic to reverse engineer some of the Sensor 
Squad's tech to temporarily disable the Latverian security system. Richards only agreed to help violate foreign soil like this, however, because Moon Knight bluffed with his Avengers ID card that the mission was sanctioned by that respectable group. Moon Knight's infiltration of the Latverian Embassy led to a face-to-face encounter with Doctor Doom and the revelation that von Doom's primary interest was in a cameo locket, once belonging to his mother, with his father's picture inside. Recognizing that Doom's goals were personal and not world-threatening, Marc turned over the locket without further conflict. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #40]
Marc's encounter with Doctor Doom revealed a personal struggle of his own... Moon Knight's body had begun breaking down at a cellular level. Moon Knight was unable to deal with his degeneration before being called to Four Freedoms Plaza through his reserve Avengers status along with the rest of Earth's heroes to deal with a cosmic threat. Captain America crossed paths with Marc and wasn't pleased with his misuse of his Avengers ID card to get Richards' cooperation against Doom. Moon Knight avoided the Avengers as the situation deteriorated when Mr. Fantastic and Wolverine each accused the other of being replaced by an evil doppelganger. In 
the brawl that followed, Moon Knight was struck by Psylocke, whose psychic knife revealed the demon corruption in Marc's body was on the verge of killing him. The conflict escalated when Richards was unmasked as an imposter and an army of evil doppelgangers invaded the building. Moon Knight fought to protect young Franklin Richards from Moon Shade, his own doppelganger, who intended to steal the vast psychic power of the boy for his own purposes. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #41-43, Infinity War #2-6]
Moon Knight tried to get a consult from Reed Richards on his condition after the Infinity War, but he was persona non grata with Mr. Fantastic after misrepresenting himself during the Latverian affair. Still, Alicia Masters testified to his efforts protecting Franklin, earning Moon Knight a consultation from Reed Richards and Doctor Strange. They determined the demo-virus corrupting Moon Knight's body had entered his system weeks ago when his hand was slashed by the demonic Hobgoblin, and Moon Knight now had a mere 72 hours before the virus ran its course 
and killed him. Doctors Strange and Richards believed a mystical/surgical treatment was possible, but they required an organic template to begin their work, a sample from the demonic host. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #44] Moon Knight and Spider-Man had a run-in with Hobgoblin that very night, but Macendale had already separated from his demonic other by this point. Marc needed a sample from the independent Demogoblin himself to complete his treatment. [Web of Spider-Man (1st series) #93-94]
In order to reach Demogoblin, Moon Knight was forced to break into Brinkstone Prison and its super-criminal confinement wing. With the help of Shadow Cabinet's Sheriff, Shark and Psycho, he arranged for his prison informant to be transferred into the same block as Demogoblin. Psycho was equipped with a device to overload the electrical system of the prison, allowing Moon Knight 
to gain entry at the opportune moment. However, this interrupted the death by electrocution of serial killer John DeZoan. The insane religious zealot somehow gained electrical powers from the aborted process, killing a number of observers and guards before kicking off his own riot.
Moon Knight barely survived his encounter with Demogoblin, who accelerated the virus' effects by biting the hero. In a hallucinogenic battle, Demogoblin tried to use Moon Knight's body as a host vessel to escape, much as he had previously been bonded to Jason Macendale. Spector managed to defeat Demogoblin by partially giving in to the strength he received from the virus, getting his tissue sample. Unfortunately, he ran into DeZoan and the rioting prisoners on the way out. The empowered DeZoan stole one of Moon Knight's multi-purpose truncheons during the struggle, escaping the prison in the riots. Moon Knight recaptured the prisoners he could as the guards regained control of the prison, but collapsed under the strain.
Frenchie managed to guide the Angelwing by remote control to retrieve Moon Knight's body and bring him back to Richards and Strange for treatment. They successfully removed the demo-virus from his system, but not before it permanently mutated his cellular structure. Marc was given 48 
hours as a critical window... if he survived the next two days, the surgery was successful. Marc and Jean-Paul initiated a "Legacy protocol" to find a new Moon Knight to carry on Khonshu's mission if necessary, but mercifully it proved to be moot. Marc Spector did survive the virus, with nothing more than a subtle crescent moon shape in his eyes to mark its passage. [Marc Spector: Moon Knight #45-47]