Artist Bill Sienkiewicz On The Origins And Enduring Appeal Of Moon Knight

Artist Bill Sienkiewicz has seen his distinctive visual style come to the screen a lot in the past several years: in the FX series Legion, based on a Marvel character he co-created with Chris Claremont, in the 2020 New Mutants film, and most spectacularly, in the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which featured his unforgettable rendition of Wilson “Kingpin” Fisk. Now another character closely associated with Sienkiewicz is splashed across the small screen: Marvel’s Moon Knight, currently running on Disney Plus.

Sienkiewicz didn’t create Moon Knight. That was writer Doug Moench, working with artist Don Perlin, who debuted the character as a villain in an issue of Werewolf by Night in 1975. The spectral mercenary proved enough of a hit with fans that Marvel kept bringing him back for guest appearances and backup stories. One such backup appeared in Rampaging Hulk magazine, and it was low enough stakes that Marvel assigned the art chores to a raw 20 year-old newcomer who’d come recommended by top artist Neal Adams.

Seeing the talent evident even in those earliest works, editors scrambled for projects to keep Sienkiewicz in the Marvel fold. They offered him and Moench a monthly Moon Knight series in early 1980 that became one of the first Marvel comics sold primarily through the direct market rather than newsstands. Moon Knight was a tremendous hit, and it’s fair to say the character and the artist put each other on the map. Sienkiewicz’s fast-evolving art wowed comics fans and propelled a little-known character to the top of the sales charts; the title’s success launched Sienkiewicz into a successful career in comics, fine art and commercial illustration that is still going strong 40 years later.

Now that the long-awaited streaming series is finally out, I had a chance to speak to Sienkiewicz about the lasting appeal of Moon Knight and what, if anything, the series is drawing from those groundbreaking early appearances. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Rob Salkowitz, Forbes Contributor. You and Moon Knight go back a long way. How did you get started working on the character?

Bill Sienkiewicz: Because I was so young and inexperienced, I wasn’t really expecting to get work from Marvel, so my whole portfolio was full of DC characters, especially ones that Neal Adams had made popular like Green Lantern and Batman. The editors saw it and figured they should start me out on a character that was the closest thing they had to Batman, which was Moon Knight.

RS: Is that how Moon Knight was presented to you? As Marvel’s version of Batman?

BS: Only in a design sense, because they thought I’d do well drawing the long flowy cape and the athletic poses. I had never heard of the character. He’d apparently been introduced as a villain in the Werewolf by Night book, and they were turning him into kind of an anti-hero type, similar to Blade. That idea of redemption appealed to me. At first I was disappointed because his cowl covered his whole face, and I was really into drawing intense facial expressions. Pretty soon I realized it was easier to make deadlines if I just had to draw a couple of eyes and some shadow!

RS: Talk a little about your collaboration with writer Doug Moench, who had created the character.

BS: Doug is a great friend and very much a professional, but I always felt bad for him having the thankless task of breaking in the new guy! He had his own way of working. Usually at Marvel, the writer would give the artist a plot, the artist would draw the pages, and then the writer would add dialogue to the art. Doug didn’t really trust me to do that at first, so he’d give me full scripts that described everything panel by panel. I bristled at that because I had done all my own writing up till then. Eventually I had to say, listen, just tell me where you want the story to go and let me get you there. By the last third of our 30 issue collaboration, we had found a good way of working. I also butted heads with the editor, Denny O’Neil, sometimes, mostly over covers. He had me rework a lot of the covers because I kept showing Moon Knight getting his ass kicked, and he wanted something a little more assertive.

I think that the idea of working with Doug now on a run revisiting the character, or something like that, might be interesting to see how that would work out. I think it would be a lot more fun considering he wouldn’t need to hold my hand or wait for the training wheels to come off.

RS: How much of the mythos of the character did you contribute, if any?

BS: I started to get more involved with the issues that introduced Morpheus and Black Spectre and Stained Glass Scarlet, but think my biggest contribution to the series was a story I did (in issue #26) called “Hit It.” I came up with the plot for that, and it felt more like a commentary on what I wanted to do with the musicality of comics, the language of comics being more than just punch-ups and characters and capes. The violence was psychological. It had a weight to it. Doug did the dialogue on a very tight deadline and it turned out really well.

RS: I had an exchange recently with author and critic Douglas Wolk, who said that story was basically the moment when Bill Sienkiewicz became the artist he would be for the rest of his career.

BS: That’s an interesting assessment. He’s not wrong. I remember when I did it, feeling an incredible sense of – I wouldn’t say satisfaction, but of doing drawing that I felt finally lived up to the potential of comics as a storytelling medium. A lot of the work I ended up doing later on New Mutants and Elektra: Assassin was me going harder in that direction. And the response at the time was really encouraging. It was quite a vindication, a positive note to keep me going.

RS: So now, after 40 years, Moon Knight is an overnight success! Have you had a chance to see the show?

BS: You know, I haven’t. I’ve heard good things, but I just haven’t had time. Ask me in 6 months after I’ve had a chance to binge it.

RS: Were you involved at all in the production, the way you were with some of the other projects derived from your work?

BS: Not really. I did some promotional images, things like that. With Legion, I saw every episode and it was great to be on board with that, and a couple other series too, but it’s a little tough to keep up with everything these days. They’re drawing from multiple versions of the character, including a lot that came along long after I was involved, and they’re putting their own stamp on it too. I’m really looking forward to seeing it all at once.