(Jewish Group) Moon Knight Is Marvel's First Openly Jewish Superhero
"Moon Knight" just dropped its fifth installment, "Asylum," which also happens to be the show's best episode yet. The Disney+ series has just one episode left of its first (and possibly only) season, and where Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac) winds up is anybody's guess. There are several aspects of the Marvel Comics character that fans worried would be improperly adapted for the MCU, most prominently Marc's mental health issues and his Jewish background, neither of which have been portrayed with much consistency in the comics. The character's book has restarted so many times with so many different creative teams, each with new ideas of who Marc Spector is exactly. As for the Disney+ series, Marvel was dealing with a largely blank slate, adapting a character that was mostly unknown to general audiences. This gave the writers quite a bit of freedom in how to render him.
Marc's mental health has been portrayed differently depending on who's writing the story. Over the years, Marc has been shown to have multiple personality disorder (now clinically known as dissociative identity disorder or DID), straight-up brain damage due to his mind being colonized by a god, or even no mental illnesses at all, just personalities created in an effort to maintain his superhero secret identity and help him fight crime. Similarly, Marc's Jewish background has been a part of his history in the comics to varying degrees, depending on which "Moon Knight" run you read.
There aren't a ton of Jewish characters in Marvel Comics. The one I always identified with most growing up was Kitty Pryde from "X-Men." As a fellow curly-haired Jewish girl, I could relate. There are others too, from Magneto to Ben Grimm, aka "The Thing" — who, by the way, sends Marc an annual Hanukkah card. Kate Bishop was shown to have a menorah in "Hawkeye," but the Christmas-set series didn't give any real details on the subject. While religion has largely been a topic skirted by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Asylum" does touch on Marc's Jewish heritage. Whether or not a Jewish actor should've been hired to play Marc is a different issue altogether. Admittedly, I love Isaac so much in this role that I can't imagine anyone else bringing Marc or Steven to life the way that he has. Beware, "Moon Knight" episode 5 spoilers follow!
Created by Doug Moench and Don Perlin in 1975, Moon Knight wasn't initially meant to be a Jewish superhero. Moench liked to name characters after people he knew and Marc Spector was no exception. The writer explained on Comic Foundry (via CBR) that Spector was named for a Manhattan comic shop employee. It's kind of mind-blowing that a name like Marc Spector wasn't dreamt up on purpose for the white-clad vigilante. However, it wasn't until later that Moench learned Spector was a Jewish name and that the employee was in fact Jewish. So, the character's heritage was actually a complete accident.
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I applaud this (and the show is quite good). Of course, the usual suspects show up from the right screeching about "wokeism" and the ones on the left who complain "Who cares?" yet are the same one screeching about the importance of representation.
