#an extension of Amon Ra with little to no control over his life whose ultimate good deed to the world is not caring and not participating

[stars-in-a-jam-jar]

(So I feel the desire to chime in because I forced myself through this run for YouTube Video Reasons and have what I believe to be a not insignificant amount of tools to break down what's up with Sun King in the Moon Knight comics. But just so my mutuals who are not Deeply Invested In Moon Knight can follow: these panels are from the Max Bemis run of Moon Knight comics which I hate. The character with burn scars on his hands is called Sun King and was made for this run by Bemis himself. The doctor speaking to him was created by Jeff Lemire in the run directly preceeding commonly regarded as one of the best Moon Knight runs in the character's history. Bemis has decided to Add Things to her character in this run. This was a bad decision.)

The characters who engage with any form of the psychiatric in the Max Bemis run speak as if someone who was deeply antipsych and a little bad at writing was trying to write a cautionary tale of why the system gets people fucking killed, EXCEPT YOU THE AUDIENCE ARE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THE SYSTEM IS NOT THE PROBLEM??????? It's repeatedly presented in this run as a constant and a generally neutral entity, but Sun King's character and his arc and relationship to Moon Knight DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS this idea with the way they and everything around the both of them is written in both this run AND the run directly preceeding.

The entirety of Sun King's arc is about him learning how to negotiate and cooperate with that system in order to not be a danger to society. But if you want me to believe this man being in psychiatric care is a good thing For Anyone, maybe don't have the inciting incident of his entry into the plot be him burning down the mental institution he's being kept in a few pages after this exchange, killing 99% of people inside. If you want me to believe this man being in psychiatric care is a good thing For Anyone, maybe don't have the things other doctors say at him and his companion later in the run (another new character don't worry about it) be so patently a one-sided lecture that makes him visibly more and more frustrated as time goes on and doesn't seem to make him any more stable and happy than Moon Knight punching some clarity into him did. If you want me to believe this man being in psychiatric care is a good thing For Anyone, Maybe Give Him A Goddamn Name??????

He starts his arc depersonalized at the hands of the psychiatric institutions that incorrectly label his latent pyrokinesis and connection to an extradimensional implied-despot god as hallucinations and symbols he's using as tools to hide from The Real Reality that he's too damaged and unwell to acheive a worthwhile place in the world and society. He must make himself More Like A Real Person, and the way to do that is to regain access to the memories he's lost to amnesiac blackouts and admit he's a bad person who's done bad and should be normal. He's called Patient 86.

He calls himself Sun King in reference to Ra, a name he didn't even come up with and which identifies him as an extension of a god he later openly calls a bitch. Marc and company also do this with Khonshu whilst calling themselves Moon Knight, but importantly all of the system members also have their own names! By the end of his arc, Sun King re-admits himself into yet another mental hospital, saying he still has some healing and growing to do (implying he'll get a name when he's Earned One) and I'm like 'All of your healing and growing happened OUTSIDE of these institutions, my guy!! With your buddy you're going in there without!!!'

Him shutting himself away in the same place he started the narrative without a name is framed as a happy ending where he's realized so much more of himself than he ever could without his encounters with everyone up to this point, and that's partially correct but in what way is he done justice and given closure by going back into his little box for crazy people?

Why should we believe this will make him happy? Fulfilled? Better as a person and member of society? His narrative starts with a doctor who's obsessing over a different patient that isn't even under her anymore and waxing philosophical about how it's enriching to truly dig into and talk to the insane— her telling him 'You can redeem yourself for being bad in these moments you have no memory of if you stop being crazy, and the way to do that is to use these things you're associating yourself with as an avenue to achieve redemption and get those memories.'

Get the fuck out of here, shut the FUCK up, who greenlit this fucking comic run? They should be fired.

Ok all things considered it's not super bad so far, there are iffy things and... I don't like they're going this hard with the med talk because I don't have the tools to be able to know whether they're saying something legit or utter bullshit.