Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1-6

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1-6

Originally released in 2015

Written by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder

Art by Natacha Bustos



In the early to mid 2010s, Marvel made a big push for the Inhumans as a property, as Fox had the movie rights to the X-Men and the Inhumans were a similar enough idea where anyone could potentially be an Inhuman.  Of the new Inhumans created during this period, only two seem to have stood the test of time - Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) and Moon Girl.  I'm far more familiar with Kamala, so I decided to read Moon Girl's first appearance.



Moon Girl is a grade school student named Lunella Lafayette, though the Moon Girl nickname seems to be less due to her interest in science and more due to her head being in the clouds.  She's far above her classmates and constantly teased for it, to the point where she doesn't want to make friends at school because she has little in common with them.



Already incredibly intelligent, Lunella has built a detector for Kree technology.  In the aftermath of an Inhuman battle in New York, she finds an orb that has been on Earth since prehistoric times.  As it turns out, the orb can also generate portals through time, which leads to killer ape-like people and a large red Tyrannosaurus Rex showing up in the middle of gym class.



Lunella is picked up by Devil Dinosaur, who unknowingly rampages through the city.  After the dinosaur puts her down, we find out that while Luna knows that she has the Inhuman gene, she isn't a full-fledged Inhuman yet, and she wants to stop the Terrigen cloud from forcefully changing people. She's terrified of being transformed into something or someone else entirely, and she's hoping she can also save others.



Unfortunately, the cavepeople that came through the portal with Devil Dinosaur have adapted surprisingly well to the modern world, at least enough to pick up on bits of language and the need for clothes.  In the skirmish that follows, the Kree device is stolen, and while Moon Girl tries to help Devil Dinosaur in her secret lab at school, it draws the attention of Amadeus Cho, who's currently a Hulk.



The issues in this series go by at a pretty good pace, and it does a pretty good job with showing Lunella as a kid who's isolated; even her parents don't really understand her and just want her to be "normal", which causes no end of frustration for everyone involved.



It feels like a great introduction to comics for younger readers, and Lunella's fears seem relatable to people of all ages given how scary the idea of a major change in your life can be. (also, everyone likes dinosaurs!)



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

Image
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth Originally released in 1989 Written by Grant Morrison Art by Dave McKean I should probably take a break from reading Batman comics (most of the DC comics that I've read for this blog have involved Batman in some form), but this is a story that I've heard a lot about, and it wasn't accessible for me until I got the higher subscription level for DC's app.  All I really know about it going into it is that it was a large source of inspiration for the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum, with the original cover (Joker's face imposed over the building, with the entrance door being in his mouth) being a key visual that develops over the course of that game. At 115 pages, without the bonus features, this is a long one. (the bonus features in the 25th anniversary edition bump it up to 220)  The book starts in a surreal way, focusing on Amadeus Arkham, the founder of the asylum; madness seems to run in his family, as he walks in on...
Read more

Vigilante #1-3

Image
Vigilante #1-3 Originally released in 1983 Written by Marv Wolfman Art by Keith Pollard These days, it feels like if a series isn't an immediate hit, it gets cancelled after twelve issues at the latest, or sometimes within four or five.  In contrast, Vigilante (a fairly minor character by my understanding) had a series that lasted fifty issues and three separate annuals, which seems insane by modern standards. I'm guessing that, in the 80s or 90s, there was a solo series with an extremely minor X-Men character who had something similar, but even that's the case, they'd be tied to a major or popular series whereas Vigilante decidedly isn't. (I recall he made a brief cameo in Teen Titans, and I know Teen Titans was huge at the time, but that's still not much) Vigilante seems like a darker take on Daredevil. Whereas Daredevil struggles to balance his life as a lawyer and his superheroics, questioning if he's doing the right thing by working outside of the syste...
Read more

Action Comics #586

Image
Action Comics #586 Originally released in 1987 Written by John Byrne Art by John Byrne About a year ago, I was nearing the end of my New Year's resolution; I wanted to read at least one comic a day and write down my thoughts online in the form of a blog .  Once I finished, it felt like a relief to not have to make a blog entry every day (I enjoyed it, but there were days where I had to rush to get a post made), but as the year went by, I grew to miss doing it. I'm going to start up a different blog, one that isn't tied to a specific year and doesn't require me to post every day, so I can write whenever the mood strikes me. For my first post, I decided to go back to one of the first comics that I remember owning. (It was this or a Spider-Man comic featuring the Montreal Expos MLB team, and that one isn't available digitally) The cover stuck in my mind, but I remember very little about the story.  Revisiting it, the cover proclaims this to be part nineteen in a crosso...
Read more