Moon Knight (Hesham Nazih)

Released in spring of 2022 on Disney+, "Moon Knight" delivered a 6-episode limited series, part of the Marvel Cinematic (and now, television) universe. Created by Jeremy Slater, and directed by Mohamed Diab, Aaron Moorehead and Justin Benson. The series follows an American mercenary and British museum employee, both played by Oscar Isaac, who we come to discover are two men sharing the same body, suffering from dissociative identity disorder. Also around are the Egyptian god Khonshu, who has taken over one of these men as his avenging avatar, Moon Knight, while a cult religious leader gathers his disciples in order to bring the goddess Ammit's justice to the world. The series premiered to strong viewership, and solid, though uneven, critical response--but it is nonetheless a singular addition to the franchise, one that largely plays outside of the larger MCU story, allowing it to develop its own style and mythology, and one which honors the Egyptian roots of the story with talent in front of and behind the camera, its visual and cultural research, and authentic musical culture. Joining the adventure is composer Hesham Nazih, who has been an active part of Egyptian cinema and television for decades, but makes his mainstream Hollywood debut with this show. Nazih delivers a power-house of a score, anchored by a stunning main theme for our hero, a motif for the gods causing mischief behind the scenes, and a hypnotic motif for the villain. Featuring lush orchestral music, featuring a number of regional specialty instruments and winds, as well as a large choir, chanting in ancient Egyptian.

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Released by Marvel Music/Hollywood Records, the score album features a generous 91 minutes of score, but unlike many of the other Disney+ shows, was not released episodically, meaning there are still quite a few musical highlights of the show that are missing, including a very different mix of one prominent cue that differs from what is heard in the show. A second album release, or at least a few bonus cues released at a later point, would be most welcome. Personally, I was a bit mixed on the show, I found it to be quite beautiful at times, presenting a fresh new world, but I also thought some of the plotting and character development, and the handling of some of the D.I.D. elements to be quite inaccurate. Nevertheless, it delivers a unique canvas and scope for music, and Nazih definitely seized the opportunity to its fullest--delivering what many hold as their favorite score of the year. Although the official album cover here is actually decent (finally giving a proper composer credit at least, which somehow seems rare for Disney these days), I still thought it would be worth exploring some different artwork that was available, so I present here a total of twelve new covers to choose from. I stuck with one font across the board, one that matches the title font, but struggled a bit with how to word the main soundtrack credit, and tried to keep the obnoxious D+ branding more subtle.

Cover 1 uses the final poster artwork of the show, timed for the release of the sixth episode, and highlighting all the central characters. I over-layed a tall poster with a wider wallpaper to increase spacing on the sides, then blend everything together, apply text, and ended up cranking the saturation up a bit to give it a bit more life. 

The second cover uses a cool dual image, showcasing Moon Knight and Steven's avatar, Mr. Knight. I enhanced resolution on the image, and widened out the sides for spacing, so I had to fudge the end of his club a bit. 

Cover 3 as far as I can tell is a custom fan creation by Tyler Wetta, adapting the central official pose of the hero, but brilliantly incorporating the broken glass and reflections. I needed to widen out the image a tad, to allow for the title and text. My solution was just to clone out the image to extend the existing image a bit wider, rather than having to separate and repaint and reconfigure the whole image, and ultimately I think the extension is fairly invisible. 

Covers 4, 6, and 7 use an early teaser posters for the film, and were fairly simple, other than cloning the background to recompose accordingly.

The fifth cover was a bit of a custom edit, but based on a foreign poster I found and some streamer background wallpapers. I ended up shifting MK to be straight vertically, as the diagonal composition didn't work well in a square cropping. I then had to cut out and move some of the city background and blend the skies together to fill in the missing space. 

Cover 8 uses one of a series of black and white teasers created for the Poster Posse by artist Eileen Steinbach, this one being my favorite. 

The ninth cover is again one chosen out of a series of teasers, featuring various objects from the show over the grey hieroglyphics background, this one I thought was the coolest and most meaningful to the heart of the show. It took a bit of work to smooth out, as for cropping reasons, I had to shrink down the statue quite a bit, and then had to take another poster from the series (with more of the background pattern intact) to then paint over the gaps created by the resized object in the center. 

Covers 10 and 11 feature official concept art by Jackson Sze, visual designer at Marvel Studios. There was a surprising lack of final art featuring Khonshu, so I thought these explorations could highlight his singular look.

Finally, the twelfth cover features a more minimalistic and textural background, using a teaser poster, for those that might like something less busy. 

Hope you enjoy the selection, and let me know your favorites from the collection.