‘Moon Girl,’ a Brainy Teenager Who Teleports a T-Rex to 21st Century Manhattan, Isn’t Your Standard-Issue Superhero

It’s just another day on the Lower East Side for your typical 13-year-old girl and her pet tyrannosaurus in “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur,” the new Marvel-Disney animated series. This Disney Channel series aimed at younger viewers details the adventures of Lunella Lafayette who, side by side with her prehistoric playmate, fights supervillains, helps her community and family, and — as you might expect from a kids show — learns life lessons, albeit in a fun, non-preachy way. The current comic book and the show both have their roots, like so much of contemporary pop culture, in the work of Jack Kirby, the Michelangelo of comics. Premiering in 1979, “Devil Dinosaur” was one of “King” Kirby’s loopiest creations. He originally set the series in a fantasy version of Jurassic Earth, in which early antecedents of mankind — semi-intelligent semi-apes with semi-human faces — interact with dinosaurs. They also speak a preposition-free pidgin English language that seems derived from Tarzan movies.Kirby’s central hero was Moon Boy, a proto-human who, in the first issue, rescues an orphan baby tyrannosaurus and raises it as his own. Together, they keep the peace in the savage land, fighting against renegade warrior tribes (i.e., the “killer-folk”), king-sized bad guys, and, in at least one issue, ancient alien invaders and giant ants. The original run lasted only nine issues, but, like many Kirby characters, Devil Dinosaur became a kind of a recurring Marvel mascot over the decades, showing up from time to time to encounter the Fantastic Four and the Hulk, among others. The new show is based on the Marvel comic series of the same name, created by Brandon Montclare, Amy Reeder, and Natacha Bustos in 2015. Like most of the best contemporary comics, “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” takes something from the past and reworks it in a fresh new way. The comic series features a highly non-traditional superhero, a brainy teenaged girl who constantly invents new devices and gadgets and somehow teleports a flaming red T-Rex into 21st century Manhattan. In Kirby’s depiction, Devil Dinosaur is a rampaging mega-beast whose ferocity is channeled into fighting the enemies of mankind’s ancestors. In the Moon Girl comics, he gradually becomes more like a big friendly dog, albeit one with monstrous jaws that can take out a truck for lunch. In the animated series, Devil Dinosaur is more anthropomorphic still, as Lunella’s adorable 30-foot companion and well-trained magic dragon. Both the comic and the show are set in a brightly-colored incarnation of the Lower East Side, here depicted as a neighborhood so rich in diversity and inclusion that it would be Ron DeSantis’s nightmare. The comics are definitely for a younger readership than the usual Marvel and DC super stories — especially if the tween status of the central character is an indicator. Still, there’s no shortage of deep Marvel backstory: Kree, Skrull, Inhumans, Terrigen Mist, Killer-folk, and even the Yancy Street Gang.The show sidesteps most of that expanded Marvel Universe (though the Wakandans do make an appearance), but it isn’t so much dumbed-down as it is, we might say, “kid-ed up.” What makes the show work is that the characters are, literally and figuratively, so well-drawn, especially Lunella (Diamond White), depicted as a prodigy genius somehow bereft of street smarts. What does a wonderchild, a wizard in science and math, need to learn? Not to listen to “haters, ” trolls, and bullies who criticize her on social media for the sole intention of getting her angry; to collaborate and play well with others; and not to be so overly competitive and goal-obsessed that she spoils everyone’s fun, including her own.Some of the storytelling seems designed for short attention spans, but each narrative is satisfyingly related — the candy colors are even brighter here than the comics, the scenes are short and snappy and enhanced with the equivalent of pop-ups, very much informed by comics tradition. Fight scenes are rendered in a full color equivalent of reverse/negative imagery, and frequently use a Lin-Manuel Miranda-style soft rap underscore. The show stresses Lunella’s relationship with her best friend Casey, also her social media director. (Every show these days, including “Muppets Mayhem,” seems to have a social media influencer character.)There’s also a well-conceived cast of original bad guys, of which my favorite is Stiletto, a fashionista from heck who undertakes a life of supervillainy to subsidize her obsession with fancy footwear, and tramples about Manhattan in criminally high heels. And the Beyonder, a pan-galactic and apparently pan-sexual god-like superbeing voiced by the show’s executive producer Laurence Fishburne. (“What is this human obsession with remakes? The original animated version was way better,” he says, having apparently just watched one of Disney’s own live action re-do’s.) Still the most rewarding plotline has Lunella learning to love her hair (which turns out to have a mind of its own) and by extension, herself. Brief spoiler: her frizzy “do” metamorphosizes into a evil entity known as “Mane Girl.” As it constantly alludes Lunella’s grasp, the hair monster shouts back at her, “Don’t bother, honey! If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s bob and weave!” “King” Kirby would be proud.

‘Moon Girl,’ a Brainy Teenager Who Teleports a T-Rex to 21st Century Manhattan, Isn’t Your Standard-Issue Superhero

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