INTRO TO COMICS I LIKE :3

Moon Knight

If you've heard about Moon Knight from the MCU show, reading the comics will destroy whatever image you have of him in your head and rebuild it in a new light. Moon Knight is the alias of three characters: Marc Spector, Steven Grant, and Jake Lockley, who all have Dissociative Identity Disorder and inhabit the same body. Their main 'power' (along with heightened strength and superhealing by night) is the ability to come back from the dead -- at a cost. Their powers derive from the patronage of the god Khonshu. By communing with him and the Overvoid (the realm that gods inhabit), their mind becomes slowly fractured until reality is little more than a myth.

Basically, Moon Knight is a psychological horror about a horribly dysfunctional Jewish system slowly succumbing to divine madness. It's great. He's so girldoomed.

Content warnings: medical abuse, unreality. The best Moon Knight run to start off with-- possibly the best Moon Knight run period-- is without a doubt Moon Knight Vol. 8, written by Jeff Lemire with art by Greg Smallwood. It's only 14 issues long and entirely self-contained. The solicit synopsis reads as follows:

"...When he wakes up in an insane asylum [sic] with no powers and a lifetime's worth of medical records, his whole identity (identities) are called into question. Something is wrong, but is that something Marc Spector himself? Jeff Lemire (EXTRAORDINARY X-MEN) and rising star Greg Smallwood are calling everything you know about Moon Knight into question."

Okay. I know what this looks like. It looks like awful shock-value ableist garbage. You have to trust me on this: it's not. I can't talk about how incredible and mind-bendy it is without giving it away, but all I'll say is, if you liked Fight Club you will most likely enjoy Lemire's Moon Knight.

The next run you should read is Jed Mackay's. This one is probably the most popular. For good reason! Mackay was actually voted Times' First Goyische Singlet To Get What It's Like To Be A Jewish System for this run. Real and true don't look it up. Unfortunately, it does bounce off of Age of Khonshu (a mini-arc that took place between Avengers vol. 8 ish. 33-37) pretty heavily in the beginning, so you'll probably want to read that beforehand to understand what's going on. Fair warning: Age of Khonshu sucks and is bad. Why is Mephisto here? Is Black Panther really defending Moon Knight while he's literally attempting world domination for purely heterosexual reasons? Has this been officially rated the most pathetic world domination attempt ever? How does Khonshu have actual followers now, isn't his whole schtick being a dead god? Why is the Phoenix here? And many more questions are raised in it that are never answered. Anyway, this run also references Devil's Reign: Moon Knight later on, which was also written by Jed Mackay and is also very good. The blurb for Mackay's Moon Knight looks like this:

I AM MOON KNIGHT! The mysterious Mr. Knight has opened his Midnight Mission, his people petitioning for protection from the weird and horrible. The Moon Knight stalks the rooftops and alleys marked with his crescent moon tag, bringing violence to any who would harm his people. Marc Spector, in whichever guise he dons, is back on the streets, a renegade priest of an unworthy god. But while Khonshu languishes in a prison that Moon Knight put him in, Moon Knight must still observe his duty: protecting those who travel at night. Let it be known – Moon Knight will keep the faith.

After that, you are probably either going "Moon Knight sucks and I don't like him," r fully obsessed with him. At this point, you do what any normal comics fan does and you begin to comb through every single appearance they've ever had. This is the point of no return. This place is not a place of honor and so on. I'd recommend starting with the very first appearance Moon Knight ever had in Werewolf by Night and then working your way through Moench's main Moon Knight run. From there, well... up to you, really, but ethically I need to strongly discourage you from reading Bendis's run and Bemis's run. Alternatively, if you don't want to read a bunch of old comics of iffy quality, you can comb through his more recent oneshots and appearances -- Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight was pretty good, for one. Moon Knight: Black, White & Blood has good art, but the writing quality varies. Above all: good fucking luck.

Drop-Out

Content warning: suicide. Drop-out is a webcomic about two lesbian furries that get high and decide to go on a roadtrip to kill themselves together at the Grand Canyon. It's a very raw and intimate depiction of love between two mentally ill people and how psychiatry/the medical incarceration system operates on a class level, etc. etc. This is the easiest one on the list to get into since you can just start at the first page. You can read it here.