Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is Marvel’s newest female superhero, and at the helm of the book are writers Amy Reeder (Madame Xanadu, Batwoman) and Brandon Montclare (Rocket Girl, Fear Itself: Fearsome Four), artist Natacha Bustos (Strange Sports Stories), editor Mark Paniccia and assistant editor Emily Shaw. According to Shaw, the genesis for Moon Girl came from a simple conversation between the creative team, when they realized Marvel had a limited number of characters that all ages could relate to.
“Mark and I were talking about how whenever people come in with young kids, or even just for Mark’s own kids, we don’t have that many publications that we can give to people that have that broad reach,” Shaw explained to EW. “Generally, we’re skewing a little bit older with a lot of our titles and we wanted to create something that adults and kids could really love, like a Pixar feel. That’s where the tone jumped off for us.”
Reeder also added,
“I think even immediately, when Mark was talking bout the possibility of a Moon Girl, in my head I had a character that I thought, ‘I would really like to draw something,’” said Reeder, who likened Lunella’s character to that of a “female Inspector Gadget — only this time, she also knows what she’s doing. Moon Girl is definitely a type of personality that I had in my mind for a long time, that hopefully people can identify with in different aspects. We all feel isolated or left out at times. So it’s been a joy to try to create something like this.”
n 1978, Marvel comics published Devil Dinosaur, a story by Jack Kirby about a red Tyrannosaurus Rex and his caveman-like friend, Moon-Boy. The series itself was short-lived. The original Devil Dinosaur book took place on an alternate universe where dinosaurs co-existed with caveman humanoids. But one of the biggest things Marvel’s creative team is looking forward to is the opportunity to bring those adventures into modern life.
“What’s really cool is to be able to put a Tyrannosaurus Rex in modern day New York City and also juxtapose with a little girl,” Montclare said. “You’re going to have a 30-foot dinosaur interacting with a three-and-a-half tall girl…I can’t think of any other book that’s kind of like that, where you have these kind of crazy things that are going to be very different to work on. But if everyone can pull it off, it’s going to be a unique type of storytelling.”
Like Kamala Khan, Sam Wilson, Jane Foster (as Thor), and Miles Morales, Lunella joins a list of superheroes that aim to make a difference in the lives of all types of readers — something that Bustos is “tremendously honored” to have a hand in as the book’s artist. While Moon Girl’s adventures will be front and center, Shaw sees the unlikely team’s relationship as “the core of all the adventures that they go on. Ultimately, all of this is about their relationship and how they’re going to learn to work together as a team, but also how Devil Dinosaur teaches Moon Girl how to relate to other people so she’s so in her head,” said Shaw.
And according to Panicca, Lunella’s struggle to fit in may be a little more complex than that of a normal teenage girl. Their hero’s journey is to discover how to use it to help others. Lunella is a little genius with grand plans on going to big schools, but she’s got an Inhuman gene, unpredictable alien DNA inside that—once triggered—could take her life in a wildly different direction. She’s determined to control that change. I think that speaks to struggles we all experience as kids and will make her story resonate with young and older readers alike.”
Source News: Entertainment Weekly
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