6 details you should know before watching 'Moon Knight'

While the description of Moon Knight/Marc Spector as Marvel's version of Batman is inaccurate, there are some comparisons to be made.

Marc Spector was introduced as a mercenary in the 1975 comic "Werewolf By Night" issue 32, where he was paid to capture the main character of the comic, Jack Russell.

Later in his own comic, Marc became the vigilante Moon Knight, protecting the streets of New York at night. The character had his own superhero equipment named after himself such as the Mooncopter and Crescent Darts.

One of the key aspects of Moon Knight is that the character has dissociative identity disorder, a mental illness that may affect up to 1.5% of the population.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders describes DID as a psychiatric disorder in which a person shows at least two individual identities or personality states that can manifest through the person's behavior.

While comics in the past have dramatized the disorder, they have got a few things right about Moon Knight's DID, such as the disorder starting after an intense trauma Spector experienced as a child.

In the past, movies such as "Split" and "Fight Club" have created a misunderstanding of and stigma against the disorder. According to the production brief for "Moon Knight," Marvel Studios consulted Dr. Paul Puri a board-certified psychiatrist and the former president of the UCLA Psychiatric Clinical Faculty Association when creating the show to portray the disorder accurately.

Alters are the name for the different individual identities or personality states a person with DID has. It is unclear how many alters Moon Knight has but it is mostly agreed that he has three, Marc Spector, Steven Grant, and Jake Lockley.

Mr. Knight and Moon Knight himself, costumed versions of Spector, have also been described as their own alters in recent comics.

In early comics, Grant and Lockley were the identities that Spector created for his vigilantism. Grant was the rich man funding their operations, Lockley was the cab driver doing reconnaissance and Spector was the vigilante.

Later on in the comics, after Moon Knight's DID is established, the character also had alters based on fellow heroes Captain America, Wolverine, Echo, Iron Man, and Spider-Man.

The trailers for the Disney+ series seem to focus on the alter Steven, who has a British accent, despite being an American hero. While we have also seen Moon Knight in costume, it is not clear whether we'll see all of Moon Knight's alters.

Another key standout for Moon Knight is the supernatural element to his stories.

Before Marc became the vigilante, he was killed in Egypt by a group of mercenaries who turned on him. After laying in front of a statue of Khonshu, the Ancient Egyptian moon god, Marcis revived by the god.

Unlike Thor, who is an alien worshipped like a god, Khonshu is a deity. However, in the comics, the Egyptian gods had been imprisoned, so in order to use their power on Earth, they choose avatars (like Spector) to inhabit, guide, and empower.

It is sometimes unclear whether Khonshu is real due to Marc's mental illness but in the last decade, the god has had a larger role in comics and has even tried to take over the world.

Marc has interacted with other avatars and Egyptian gods such as the god of the sun, Amon Ra, trickster god, Seth, and god of the dead, Anubis. 

The main villain in "Moon Knight" is Arthur Harrow, played by Ethan Hawke. In the comics, Arthur was an obscure scientist villain, but this version of the character is a cult leader.

This is not the first time the character has fought against a cult: from "Moon Knight" issue 189 to issue 200, the hero fought against two cults. The first was led by the avatar of Amon Ra who wanted to defeat Moon Knight to settle the never-ending war between the sun god and his son Khonshu. 

After defeating this avatar in combat, Moon Knight met an underground sadistic cult, the Société des Sadiques, run by a Nazi called Ernst. Ernst, who had renamed himself after fleeing Nazi Germany, was a former friend of Marc's father when the hero was a child.

Confronting Ernst as a child was the traumatic event that caused Marc to develop DID.

Ernst tried to manipulate Moon Knight into joining the cult but instead, the hero shut it down and killed Ernst. It is unclear whether the new series will be adapting either of these stories or going in a new direction entirely.

Moon Knight has a number of nemeses and the Disney+ series seems to be bringing one of them, Midnight Man, into the MCU.

Anton Mogart, played by the late Gaspard Ulliel, is a thief who tries to get the better of the Moon Knight.

Meanwhile, May Calamawy is also part of the main cast as an entirely new character, Layla El-Faouly.

Layla has been described as Moon Knight's only ally, which could mean she is based on the hero's main sidekicks: his friend and Mooncopter pilot Frenchie, or his lover Marlene Alraune.