This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post here at Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at the earliest 1970s appearances of the Marvel character Moon Knight.
WEREWOLF BY NIGHT Vol 1 #32 (Aug 1975)
Title: The Stalker Called Moon Knight
Villains: The Committee
NOTE: Jack Russell (Americanized from Russoff) was an established Marvel character who suffered from the family curse of lycanthropy. Jack faced several horrors while seeking a cure for his family curse.
Synopsis: In Los Angeles, Jack’s recurring foes the Committee have returned and still want to force Jack to become their unwilling Werewolf assassin. This time around they have hired a ruthless mercenary named Marc Spector and provided him with a costume, silver cestus gloves, silver boots, a silver truncheon and silver crescent moon blades so he can capture the Werewolf for them.
NOTE: This origin for Moon Knight would be retconned in the future, replaced with Khonshu the Moon God empowering and equipping Marc Spector when he was mortally wounded while robbing tombs in Egypt.
Moon Knight arrives at Jack’s Los Angeles apartment, where Jack shows up shortly before the Full Moon rises and turns him into the Werewolf. The pair fight it out through the streets of L.A. while Moon Knight’s helicopter pilot Frenchie abducts Jack’s sister Lissa and girlfriend Topaz.
Moon Knight’s silver weaponry enables him to eventually defeat the Werewolf, given its vulnerability to silver. He knocks out the beast and begins to carry him up the rope ladder to Frenchie’s helicopter hovering overhead. Continue reading
THE HUMAN FLY 
Origin: Rick Rojatt was given a fictional origin story for this Marvel Comics series. He was a young man who was severely injured in a car crash that killed his wife and children. After much reconstructive surgery, roughly 60% of Rojatt’s bone structure was replaced with lightweight steel. 
SPIDER-MAN Vol 1 #176 (Jan 1978) 
Peter becomes Spider-Man and gets to the apartment that Harry shares with Flash Thompson. He finds Flash unconscious on the floor and the Green Goblin ransacking Harry’s bedroom. Spider-Man attacks the villain, assuming it’s Harry in the costume, but in a few issues it will turn out to be Dr. Hamilton himself, who manipulated his patient Harry Osborn to find his late father Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin costume and weaponry. 
SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #17 (Aug 1979) 
Our heroine slips away from Eric to try getting back her costume without exposing her secret identity. At one point, the drunken woman dressed as Spider-Woman falls off the deck of the mountaintop disco. Jessica uses her powers to save the woman and recover her costume before the drunk knows what’s what. 
MARVEL TEAM-UP Vol 1 #53 (Jan) 
The genetically engineered human/ animal hybrid creature Woodgod (at right) – also immune to the nerve gas – is still being contained in the depopulated town by Major Del Tremens and his troops at Tranquility Base, who caused the nerve gas leak. 
MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN Vol 1 #1 (Jan 1973) 
That chunk is brought on board Walton’s vessel and stored in the hold. While the captain relates to a crew member the tale told to his ancestor about the monster’s creation and history, the rest of the crew plot a mutiny over being kept in the frozen north for so long just to recover a monstrous corpse.
GHOST RIDER – Daredevil biker Johnny Blaze makes a deal with the devil: Johnny’s soul in exchange for Satan curing the cancer in the body of Blaze’s mentor “Crash” Simpson. We all know how deals with the devil go, and not only does Crash die anyway, but Johnny Blaze is cursed to periodically transform into the flame-headed monster called Ghost Rider.
MYSTIC COMICS Vol 1 #1 (Mar 1940) 
B. Dynamic Man – Scientist Dr. Simon Goettler creates 
DEFENDERS Vol 1 #17 (Nov 1974) 
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #25 (Oct 1975) 
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