Marvel held its latest "Next Big Thing" press conference call Thursday afternoon, with writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Alex Maleev—a team that has previously collaborated on definitive runs on "Daredevil " and "Spider-Woman," as well as their creator-owned "Scarlet"—on hand to discuss the new May-debuting "Moon Knight" ongoing, along with Senior Vice President of Publishing Tom Brevoort and moderator James Viscardi.
"I looked at the history of Moon Knight and just thought, you know, if you just made his costume off-white, he'd be awesome," Bendis joked.
Commenting on the idea of "getting the band back together," Maleev said that he "wasn't aware the band broke up," with Bendis adding that "there hasn't been a month off" that the two haven't been working together since "Daredevil." "We've been working on 'Scarlet' and 'Moon Knight' for the entire year."
Bendis said that Joe Quesada approached him at a retreat and said simply, "You and Alex Maleev, Moon Knight." "Well that was an odd thing to say. Then I went back to my hotel and I couldn't stop thinking about Moon Knight—it was like I was hypnotized!"
The writer is taking an approach to the character as "a man who loves his personalities" and is looking for ways to have them work together. With his new role in the Secret Avengers, "wouldn't it be interesting if his psyche was more emboldened by this" and adapted the personalities of the Avengers, Bendis remarked.“And wouldn't it be fun to see the criminals of the Marvel universe not know how to deal with this completely insane person who thinks he's Spider-Man one day, Wolverine the next?”
A slick and successful new personality producing a Hollywood take on "Legend of Konshu" will see Moon Knight come into a lot of money as he adopts LA as his home, where he will seek to stop the rise of a new West Coast Kingpin, Bendis said.
“And he always finds a way to make me draw Spider-Man!” Maleev said.
“Alex hates drawing Spider-Man, and he's going to draw Spider-Man whether he likes it or not,” Bendis said.
For more, see part two!