Black Superheroes: Moon Girl

Welp...that's f**king terrifying!

Name: Lunella Lafayette 

First Appearance: Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1 (2015) 

History: Lunella Lafayette is a Haitian-American 9-year old girl who also just happens to possess absurdly high intelligence. Even with her genius intellect, she is unable to get into schools more appropriate for her and languishes in her local public school, inventing things both publicly and in secret. At some point Lunella discovered that she was a latent Inhuman, superpowered individuals whose powers activate when exposed to Terrigen crystals or mist…and it just so happen that a rogue Terrigen cloud has been floating throughout the world transforming all latent Inhumans in touches. To save herself, she found a Kree Omni-Wave Projector but it somehow opened a portal that brought Devil Dinosaur into New York City. With his own partner, Moon Boy, just killed, Devil strikes an odd bond with Lunella, and, eventually, the two decided to work together as Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur.

 ….and then Lunella gets stuck by the Terrigen cloud she was trying to hard to avoid. Thankfully, her powers don’t cause a physical change, as she had been fearing, but rather it grants her the power to switch minds with Devil. With their bond, Devil’s brute strength, and Moon Girl’s super genius and array of homemade gadgets, the pair attempt to find their place in the greater superhero world. 

 Beta Says: Before Moon Girl debuted if you had asked me if I thought cult classic Devil Dinosaur could work in a modern setting I would have said “no.” The fact that his introduction also included the creation of one of the most original black superheroes of the day would have been completely beyond my comprehension. And yet, Moon Girl replacing the not quite human Moon Boy, has been one of the most successful new characters in Marvel’s attempt to add further diversity to their books. She even had her own animated series that recently premiered on Disney+. (…and it’s canceled? Maybe?!) Could Lunella, a character who is confirmed to be the smartest person in the Marvel Universe, be the mainstream black superhero we’ve been looking for? 

It's too bad that Marvel anchored her to their biggest marketing mishap in modern Marvel history. 

 More on the latest and greatest dynamic duo after the jump.

He's some kind of mutant T-Rex
That's all I'm prepared to talk about it

Before we can talk about Moon Girl we have to talk about Devil Dinosaur and the Inhumans. Let’s start with the former; Devil, along with Moon Boy, is a creation of Jack Kirby circa 1978. This was during an era when both Marvel and DC had accepted that Kirby was the most talented and creative creator of the era and would just let him do whatever he wanted (until they decide to fire him). In some cases, he’d create genre defining concepts that are still important today and in other cases he created the Eternals. Devil Dinosaur was something in the middle; not a hugely successful or popular character but a cult hit with the right people. Hilariously, the whole reason Marvel had Kirby create them in the first place was to compete with DC Comic’s Kamandi comic...which was also created by Kirby. What even is this?

Anyway, Devil and Moon Boy first appeared in Devil Dinosaur #1, and while their comic was very short lived they would pop up here and there over the next several decades, never being a huge part of the Marvel Universe but a fun reminder of how weird and diverse it can be.

Now the Inhuman side of things…is a f**king mess. I will try to be succinct. The Inhumans were another, earlier Jack Kirby creation (alongside Stan Lee during their legendary original run on Fantastic Four). To put simply, they are a superhuman race of people who are the descendants of prehistoric humans who were experimented on by the alien race known as the Kree. Since their inception they have been the definition of “cult favorite” as there are many people who love them but the average fan has always been less enthusiastic. This would be fine until the 2010s, when Marvel was finally fed up with having lost the film rights to X-Men and the Fantastic Four (despite that selling those rights in bad deals is what saved the company in the 1990s). This led to a lot of stuff beyond today’s scope, including a civil war within the company that ended with instigator of all this BS, noted shitbag Isaac Perlmutter, to lose his spot as head of Marvel. The important thing today is that Ike hated that the X-Men brand had so much mainstream success due to the movies while Marvel got basically none of the revenue due to their deal with Fox. His solution: sabotage the X-Men comics.

And then the Inhumans made Earth uninhabitable for mutants
Seriously

Now at this point you might be asking “what the hell does this have to do with Moon Girl?” It’s so goddamn stupid. Basically, and I say this a fan who followed these events from an outside perspective, it seemed Ike & CO.’s idea to sabotage the X-Men would be to slowly over time fade them into the background and replace them and mutants in general with a different group of superpowered beings attached to an IP they still fully controlled: the Inhumans. Now, rather than a cloistered group of people living in isolation, there are now countless latent Inhumans across the globe who, if exposed with this fancy Terrigen cloud floating around, would gain powers in a world that hates and fears them.

Marvel made a HUGE push with this new Inhuman narrative; putting the Inhumans in the middle of several events, putting tons of effort and marketing dollars into a Inhuman TV show, and, of course, making lot of new lead characters in new titles be Inhuman as part of their origin. The most famous example of the latter was the new Ms. Marvel, but another example was Moon Girl. In both cases their ties to the Inhumans wasn’t a natural part of their pre-development but felt more like a mandate. Now, Kamal Khan’s stories ended up using the Inhuman factor to great effect and made it a surprisingly central and emotional core for her first series (also gave her Lockjaw). As for Moon Girl, her connection to the Inhumans seemed…superfluous at best. Admittedly, I’m more familiar with the first two arcs of Lunella’s comic rather than the whole series, but her Inhuman nature never felt necessary, but the basic premise of Moon Girl, confirmed to be Marvel’s smartest person, fighting crime with her pet dinosaur is solid without the extra baggage.

There is no problem that can't be solved by smarts
(and also a dinosaur friend)

And, indeed, it seems I’m not the only who feels this way as adaptations of the character have started coming out and they have chosen to just ignore the Inhuman factor all together, and they have been better for it. The whole “let’s make the Inhumans replace the X-Men” plan was incredibly shortsighted and displayed and incredible lack of respect and understanding of the core fan base, but thankfully that experiment is over, and we’ve all moved (even Ms. Marvel has been having her Inhuman connection retconned in the last few years).

Alright, let’s talk about Moon Girl more directly, shall we? The character debuted during a time when Marvel was doing a super big push for diversity in their comics, the same initiative that created Ironheart and had Jane Foster become Thor and Sam Wilson become Captain America. While many of those choices have been divisive, Moon Girl has been pretty universally liked, likely because of the combination of replacing a D-list character that most people didn’t care about. Plus, a lot of her schtick is quite unique, her being such a young girl who apparently is smarter than Mister Fantastic who pals around with one of Jack Kirby’s more out-there creations in Devil Dinosaur. She’s the most interesting new black superhero I’ve seen in years, with just a huge amount of potential for storytelling.

She's got a lot of cool covers too

Her stock is also currently quite high. She and Devil recently had a cartoon come out on Disney+, and though I can’t at this time confirm if it’s been canceled, plus Disney pulled a coward move by not airing an episode that focused on a trans person because of the re-election of Farts McGoo. I can say that what I’ve seen of the show has been excellent. It takes a ton of liberties with the source material, including aging Lunella up, simplifying Devil’s background, adding a crucially needed supporting character in Casey Calderón, and most importantly taking that Inhuman crap right out of the equation. The show has gotten a lot of critical acclaim and while it’s not a giant hit (being behind a paywall doesn’t help it) it has introduced a lot of new fans to the character. Plus, this show is so black. Like, dude, it makes Static Shock look like the Cosby Show.

Bottom line is, despite her creation being tied to one of the worst marketing blunders in modern superhero history, Moon Girl might be the black superhero we’ve been waiting for if the right people work on her at the right time. The only things that could stop it is lack of interest form the company to move forward (possibly a result of a newfound realization that they can be racist again; thanks for nothing, Farts).  If they do keep moving forward, maybe bring Casey into the comic.

Marvel, get Casey into the comics immediately!

For more on Moon Girl check out World of Black Heroes. That’s it for Blake Superheroes Month this year. See you next year, assuming we’re all still alive and not in the middle of a civil or world war.