Biography - Page 9
Marc struggled to get back in action properly as Moon Knight. Marc's attempt at reconciliation with Marlene sputtered before it got started. Once they had their reunion the night they fought Taskmaster, Marc expected they would just fall into old habits and Marlene would be there for him. Instead, when he didn't call her, she continued to move on with her own life. With one Moon-Copter crashed into the side of the Committee building, he had trouble with the mechanics necessary for getting one of the others flying. Marc tried to talk Jean-Paul into coming back to 
work for him, but his mercenary days were behind him. Instead, Jean-Paul took him to Gena's Diner. Gena Landers was less than pleased to see Marc. Her boys, Ricky and Ray, had grown up and joined the Armed Forces in part because of Marc's inspiration. Ricky was killed fighting overseas during Marc's wallowing, and he had never reached out to Gena. Ray's mother was still grieving her lost boy, but he had been a helicopter pilot in the service, and was willing to work with Moon Knight again, so long as Gena didn't know.
Moon Knight reconnected with Detective Flint over a new string of gruesome Midnight killings. The cyborgs Jeff Wilde and Lynn Church resurfaced, and Jeff was trying to call Moon Knight out by killing people and painting a clock on the floor in their blood, using severed limbs for the clock's 
hands. Marc reconnected with Profile, forcing the intuitive thinker into predicting where Midnight would be hiding out. Moon Knight traced Midnight down to the sewer hideout where his father the Midnight Man nearly died. After Midnight captured and began brutalizing Moon Knight, however, Marc learned this whole exercise had been a warped cry for help. Midnight and Lynn Church desperately wanted to die, yet their programming prevented them from self-terminating or killing each other. Midnight's actions had been provocation to try and get Moon Knight to kill them. Despite reclaiming his role as Fist of Khonshu, Marc was still trying to avoid becoming a killer again in his search for vengeance. In this instance, however, he made an exception and both killed and dismantled the cyborgs, scattering their remains over a final "midnight" clock scorched in flames. [Moon Knight (5th series) #7-12]
During all this, the Superhuman Civil War kicked off over registration of vigilantes and powered individuals. Both Captain America and Tony Stark made a point of visiting Marc to tell him they didn't approve of his methods, and neither of them wanted Moon Knight on their side. For his own part, Marc had always seen himself as a "lawless vigilante" and wasn't going to change his behavior at all because of the Registration Act. Although he still wasn't willing to kill for Khonshu's vengeance, he was willing to brand criminals with the crescent moon on their brow, spreading word of his god. Still, Khonshu advised Marc that he would get less interference in their work if he 
registered. To achieve this, Marc and the Profile stalked the psychologist who would be performing Marc's mental fitness exam. Using Profile's insight, Marc went to the exam and pretended to be possessed by the voice of Khonshu. His god act and the information Profile discerned was enough to convince the psychologist he was in the presence of a true deity, cowing him into doing "Khonshu's" bidding and fast-tracking Moon Knight's official status as a registered hero. [Moon Knight (5th series) #13]
Despite his "official" status, Moon Knight's vigilante justice and especially his "marking" victims with the moon drew negative attention from the public. The media openly questioned how such an unstable vigilante could become a registered hero in this new era. At the same time, Khonshu felt Spector wasn't going far enough, since he wasn't killing his victims and sacrificing them in the name of the moon. Marc was stretched between serving his god and maintaining his own self-image as a "hero." Still, Marlene was slowly warming to him. After the rush of viciously fighting off some muggers while her new boyfriend stood helpless, Marlene recognized her addiction to violence, and turned to Marc as an understanding party. They began sleeping together again, although a full relationship was an idea kept at arm's length.
Moon Knight started relying on the Profile to seek out targets in need of vengeance. Profile alerted him that Simon Maddicks had recently been released from prison, the same super-villain called Killer Shrike who nearly cost Jean-Paul his legs months before his final injury. Moon Knight eagerly beat Shrike into a coma, but this didn't improve his relations with Jean-Paul. Frenchie considered that debt over and paid already, and did not welcome Marc's brutality. Further, his 
partner Rob had begun associating with Marc as his physical therapist and trainer. Rob enjoyed hearing about Marc's work and didn't appreciate the scope of violence that followed Spector around, even after being injured twice himself. Jean-Paul tried to explain his concerns, but Rob only thought he was jealous of his friendship with Marc. Jean-Paul ultimately asked Marc to stay away for a time, and Rob reluctantly supported the idea to preserve his relationship with Jean-Paul.
Meanwhile, Carson Knowles (the Black Spectre) was also released from prison. Dealing with a corrupt parole officer and trouble reintegrating into society, Knowles backslid and began a plan to take revenge on Moon Knight. He killed his parole officer and also Simon Maddicks in his hospital room, marking both of them with the sign of the moon, as the papers reported Moon Knight doing. 
Around the same time, Ray Landers disobeyed Marc's orders about staying out of the fray and opened fire with the Moon-Copter's guns, killing a gang member to save Moon Knight in front of the police. Therefore, to the authorities, it all seemed like a natural progression of Moon Knight's violent tendencies for him to escalate to murdering criminals as well. Marc found even his closest associates had trouble believing he was innocent, and the stress caused him to pull out the stripped and preserved flesh of Bushman's face from storage. Marlene walked in on Marc wearing a dead man's face like a mask, which considerably hampered any possibility of their reconciliation.
[Note: Really. F#$%ing. Crazy.]
Public outrage reached the point where Iron Man intervened personally as director of S.H.I.E.L.D. When his men attempted to interview Dr. Depford about registering Moon Knight, however, the psychiatrist killed himself rather than betray "Khonshu." Black Spectre's copycat killings continued and so Iron Man brought S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Initiative to Moon Knight's doorstep. Moon Knight told Iron Man about Carson Knowles, but that was almost beside the point at this juncture.
Marc being sidelined infuriated Khonshu, who still wanted blood, and sacrifice, and vengeance. Marc refused to become a killer again for his god, just as Black Spectre found him. Moon Knight was already defeated psychologically, and Black Spectre had little trouble disabling him, just to prove he could. Marc crawled back into his wheelchair and begged Crawley to come by with more 
pills, slipping back into his habits from before the Committee's attack. Crawley refused to allow it, however, and berated Jake for thinking only about himself and his losses. Moon Knight's crusade was what gave Crawley's own life value; it was what got him up in the morning instead of face down in his own filth, like when Jake first found him. His words broke through Marc's self-pity and got him to put the suit back on again.
Moon Knight found Black Spectre at a rally for the unsung heroes of the Initiative. Knowles had been busy, raiding a Stark Industries facility and picking up a nanogenic weapon for himself. A two-stage nanotech payload, the first delivery system released nanites into the air, bonding with the cerebral cortex of anyone who absorbed them to act as a receiver. The second nanite delivery was a single injection, turning one person into a transmitter, able to utterly command anyone who was infected with the receiver payload. Black Spectre remembered his failed bid for mayor of New York, and wanted to make the people love him again. He had already released the first payload unnoticed into a crowd of thousands when Moon Knight arrived. As Black Spectre injected himself with the second payload, he drew the attention of the crowd and the spotlights to make his first commands. Moon Knight was forced to toss Black Spectre to his death in full view of the cameras and thousands of people to save them all. (Unknown to Marc, Knowles had been provoked into all of this by the Profile, in order to get rid of Moon Knight and extract himself from under Spector's thumb.) [Moon Knight (5th series) #14-19]
Moon Knight was done for, in the Initiative and the public, and Marc Spector found he liked it that way. Spector renounced Khonshu completely, discarding the vestments of Moon Knight in order to 
fight for justice on his own, and on the run. Iron Man was desperately running damage control to find Moon Knight, both to defend the Initiative and to cover his own role in the situation when the Stark Industries nanites were found in Black Spectre's corpse. The Commission on Superhuman Activities stepped in to relieve Stark from the investigation, putting their own vigilante hunters the Thunderbolts on the job. Their first strike went quite poorly and Marc was able to escape, albeit not without sustaining injuries. [Moon Knight 5th series) #21-22]
Marc's injuries were enough to make him beg for Khonshu's beneficence again, but the God of the Moon had grown tired with Spector's half-baked vengeance. Claiming he had other vassals, Khonshu left Marc to his own devices. Meanwhile, Norman Osborn of the Thunderbolts got advice from the Profile and had a street gang Moon Knight had previously beaten and marked turned loose on Jean-Paul's restaurant. Rob was beaten and this drew out both Jean-Paul and Marc as 
Moon Knight, looking for revenge. Marc was forced to contend with the Thunderbolts' secret assassin, Bullseye. Moon Knight was pursued back to an underwater pen he used for vehicle storage. Moon Knight set off a series of explosions, seemingly in a suicide play against Bullseye, forcing the Thunderbolt to flee. Moon Knight was officially declared dead by the government, although his friends knew otherwise. Marc Spector retreated into the identity of Jake Lockley and fled to Mexico, going into hiding to nurse his wounds and refocus his mind. [Moon Knight (5th series) #23-25]
In Mexico, Lockley was drawn into a conflict between a local drug kingpin and his daughter, who was trying to report on him to the government. Lockley and the Zapata Brothers helped the woman escape her father's pursuers, and Jake reconnected with his identity as Moon Knight. He still saw Khonshu occasionally, but the god was significantly reduced and only appeared in smaller, dismissible representations. Marc Spector was buried in his mind, but Jake Lockley was prepared to return to New York and operate as Moon Knight, a hero and not a knight for vengeance. With several sacks full of money taken from the fallen crimelord, Moon Knight returned to action in the United States. [Moon Knight (5th series) #26-30]