So, it's come to this...

Disclaimer #1: For any of my readers who may be actively avoiding US politics this election season, let me give you a trigger warning. This entry is going to be addressing a politically driven satire that pokes fun at both major party candidates. If that is not your cup of tea, I advise you to give this read a pass.

Disclaimer #2: I'm an intractable bleeding heart liberal and I'm totally in the tank for Hillary and will probably be more prone to noticing the Trump jokes than the Clinton ones. If you don't want to sit through someone taking glee in and/or analyzing social commentary about your candidate of choice, you may want to sit this one out.

For those of you who are still reading this, let's all be honest: the election season has been a bit of a bear and both parties have ended up with candidates that are not without their detractors from within their respective parties as well as from their traditional opposition. But for every dark cloud, there is a silver lining: political satire. Yup, nothing takes the sting out of a particularly unpleasant election cycle quite like all of us gathering together as one to heal by taking the piss out of our entrenched political system. And for that, Marvel has given us this little boon that is Vote Loki.

One thing I love about this book is that it's pretty apparent early on that it's extra-canonical. It's certainly set in the world and basic status quo of the artist formerly known as Earth-616, but there really only a scant few wonky continuity things you need to know going into this book:
1. This is not your father's Loki. In the past decade, Loki has been revived twice, once as a woman (although that didn't take), and a second time as a child (aka my favorite Loki). Kid Loki eventually magically aged up more or less to make him about the same age as Tom Hiddleston around the time of the first Avengers movie. These days, he straddles the fuzzy area between being an anti-hero and anti-villain, but I think you can sum him up best as being a character who uses villainous means with theoretically heroic altruistic intent.
2. Thor is a woman now. Don't worry, the actual son of Odin and Freyja/Gaea is still roaming around somewhere, but the actual person now worthy to lift and wield the enchanted uru hammer Mjolnir (and all the powers that go with it, including the superhero persona) is Thor's original love interest, Jane Foster. And it's slowly killing her. She has cancer and every time she becomes Thor, it undoes the effects of her chemotherapy.
3. Loki and Thor have a new half-sister from another company. In a dispute with Image Comics, Neil Gaiman was awarded the rights to winged warrior woman Angela and he allowed her to be brought into Marvel's pantheon of characters in a wacky timeline-wonky story. To better weave her into the universe (and don't ask me the fine details because I haven't gotten around to reading that story yet), it was revealed that Angela is their long-lost sister. She's basically a hyper-aggressive She-Ra wing wings.

Well, now that I've covered the basics, on with the story of Vote Loki. Years ago (no specific time is given because characters only age when editors and/or Franklin Richards wills it so), the Avengers donated a large sum of money to rebuild a neighborhood in NYC  that had been utterly pulverized following one of their epic battles. If only scenes like this were featured prior to the events of Civil War... I'm sorry but I know it's considered a contemporary bench mark for Marvel, but on a basic conceptual level it's just not that good in terms of logistics and solid character-driven motivation on either side of the divide.

I can't help but notice the character lineup. Cap, Iron Man, Black Widow, Wasp, and... the Hulk? Okay, the Hulk's presence here means this would have to be either very early days or very recent. I could quibble about the details, but I'd rather just skip all that and arrive at the conclusion that this is not in-continuity and the MST3K mantra is in full effect: it's just a comic book, relax.

That money never got where it was supposed to because NY Governor Hitt funneled the donation from the Stark Foundation into his election campaign. Yeah, we are two panels into this book and we are not holding back when it comes to pointing out the deeply skeavy practices we've learned of in recent years in which charitable donations don't end up helping who they're supposed to.

One of the people effected by this morally bankrupt decision was a young Nisa Contreras who couldn't be more than maybe a high school freshman based on her appearance. From here we have a time skip. The book describes it as "a few years later," which in my mind means "not many." Of course, Marvel's timeline is weird, so a few years gave the tween enough time to get a journalism degree and establish herself as a reporter for the Daily Bugle. Of course, when your titular character is a millennia-old deity, what qualifies as "a few years" may be relative.

Nisa doesn't pull her punches and it's a great way of establishing her character as our deuteragonist as she uses her journalistic prowess to publicly take down Governor Hitt, exposing his wrong-doing from her youth. I'm not going to pretend that she didn't have vested interest in seeing him get his comeuppance, but she doesn't seem to gain satisfaction with it. The juxtaposition of the past and present scenes implies that she does have an inherent sense of bias, but it also frames her as a social justice crusader. As much as I think the internet has maligned that expression, I think it's fitting. After all, I think, particularly when speaking in terms of US politics, we are culturally hard-wired to associate truth and justice... and the American Way, whatever that implies.

Sometime later, Nisa is on the presidential election beat and she finds herself in the Spin Room, where she befriends a fellow named Lucas who finds the idea of the Spin Room amusingly subversive and I envy Lucas for remembering a time when a Spin Room was a bit of a distasteful novelty and not the sad truth of our endemic suffering. Yeah, I can hardly remember the Before Time, but for the past 3-4 months I've had to live in a world where Trump has nearly constantly been spewing offensively bigoted incendiary remarks unashamedly, only to have to hear his talking heads explain what he really meant by his latest characteristic racist/islamophobic/jingoistic/xenophobic/misogynistic/politically obtuse statement. I miss those halcyon days...

Our two leading candidates are never named in the series. Marvel has a history of not naming the presidents, at least when they factor into a story instead of being mentioned off-hand, Despite this, they do resemble their real-world counterparts, at least in broad strokes and without playing into their caricatured features. Keep in mind, this book was first announced in March and hit shelves in June, which means that even while we were still in the thick of the presidential primaries, the creative team had the clairvoyance to know that Clinton would end up clinching the democratic nomination and the Republican candidate would be an old white guy. While they are never named, the secret service refer to them as "Enterprise" and "Buffalo." When elected, I plan to address Hillary as President Enterprise and I advise you to do the same.

Nisa, being an observant journalist, spots someone with a concealed weapon in the audience and manages to alert the audience just as a small cadre of Hydra agents reveal themselves. Before they have time to enact their mission, Lucas reveals himself to be our titular character, Loki. He employs irony, besetting magical gold snakes on them. Their bite puts the Hydra agents into a coma.

Now, keep in mind, this happened in the spin room of a presidential debate. There are cameras and reporters everywhere, and with the candidates having been whisked away by secret service agents, the media all train their focus on Loki. This does seem a little odd because you'd think the safety and security of the presidential candidates would be a top priority. On the other hand, this title has a pretty flippant attitude about both candidates and aren't all that fond of the media either, so I guess it's easy to write it off as the media would rather focus on a shiny thing rather than cover the two major party candidates if they can help it.

It's pretty clear that he's toying with them and being fairly coy, but at the same time he's being refreshingly transparent about who and what he is. When asked who he's voting for, he says neither, since they're both liars. Then he declares that if he were president, he'd lie to them brazenly and they'd love him for it. I fail to see the difference is between what he's suggesting he would do and what the candidates do, but this is the basis on which buzz around his campaign is formed, so you just have to roll with it. Throughout the book, you'll see his appearances on media outlets be met with approval from hoi poloi, but you'll notice that the audience we see skews pretty young, and very urban. They're reactions sound more like they want to buck the system or praise a rockstar. This book has some opinions about millennials and/or hipsters.

Despite claiming to not be interested in running for president, he's doing a press junket, including an appearance on J. Jonah Jameson's talk show. Yeah, for future reference, it's actually been a while since he's been the EiC of the Daily Bugle. Between now and then, he's had a stint as the mayor of NYC. Now, however, he's been reduced to being a paper-thin Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly analogue. The studio has the stripes of the American flag in the background, giving it that extra jingoist touch. And like any conservative talking head, he turns out to be a birther.

Of course. The joke is on him however as when Loki reincarnated, he was born with a US birth certificate. I vaguely remember Thor finding the reincarnated Loki in Paris, France. It's been a while since the Fraction run, so I may be wrong. Even if I am wrong, Loki has been magically aged up. He was maybe 12 before, then was aged up to be about 18-21, and yet the minimum age for US candidacy is 35, so I guess the actual qualifications don't matter in this book. Even so, I wonder how he'd go about proving his birth certificate's authenticity.

Basic logic aside, it is worth it to see Jameson get caught on national television looking like a fool. Worth it.

This public humiliation is cut short however when the show gets a call-in from who else but intrepid reporter, Nisa Conteras. And she is clearly not on #TeamLoki. Remember that fight the Silver Age Avengers had in her old neighborhood? Well, it just so happens that they were battling against none other than our man, Loki. Gasp! Twist!! As we've learned about Nisa, her job as a reporter is to take down everyone who ruined her childhood. And not even death and rebirth is enough to wipe the slate clean for her. However, it's incredibly fitting considering one of our real world analogues has spent the past few decades ruining the financial futures of contractors and his own employees while getting away scot free.

Loki magicks himself into her apartment, which I have to imagine left Jameson scrambling to fill the time until the commercial break, He want to have a candid tête-à-tête with her, even while she pulls a gun on him. I suppose a single woman in NYC needs to be able to protect herself, but on the other hand making her a gun owner keeps her from being a read as an completely liberal anti-NRA strawman.

He admits to her that he is planning to run, and asks her to visit his campaign headquarters to write a story about it. Despite her better judgment, she goes.

This really has to be a whirlwind campaign because he already has a building full of pollsters making cold calls. The building is called the Ophidia research center. Ophidia is latin for snake or serphent, by the way. That's a nice touch, since most people wouldn't make the catch. It's a dumb mistake because I think the writer assumes that all religions and cultures have the same connotations. No, the god of lies is not the same as the father of lies. He's not the devil, therefore has no association with snakes. The only snake in Norse Mythology is the World Serpent, which surrounds the world, swallowing its own tail until the end of the world. Sidebar: In the Marvel Universe, the World Serpent is a guy and technically Odin's great uncle... because choices.

And of course, there are protesters outside who are crazed out of fear of what a Loki presidency would look like and inside, the pollsters are also crazy because that's what happens when an on-again, off-again villain runs for office. With all that insanity, it only makes sense that Loki hired some protection, so his sister Angela (see above, re: new continuity) has been employed to run security.

Oh, and did I mention Loki is a woman now? Don't think too much about it and don't get too invested in female Loki. Basically, Loki took this form for the day in an effort to throw whatever he can at the wall and see what sticks. They could have done more with this considering how much gender has played into this campaign, but this book is really avoiding getting bogged down with actual issues. Why talk about that when you can settle for ragging on the political process itself? That being said, female-presenting Loki actually does look presidential, as opposed to his default form, who looks like a scruffy rockstar. My boyfriend and I can't seem to agree on who, he does have a late 80's glam affect to his appearance. Steven Tyler? Keith Richards? Steve Tyler?

I don't think Nisa had any intention of coming away from this visitation with anything but an excoriating article, which she sends to her editor with a headline of "Loki Will Burn Washington." Mainly this is because of the ramblings of one crazed pollster. However, she ignores the fact that Loki has some sound ideas about bolstering the economy by providing large businesses who stay stateside with an incentive. Of course, why would she be balanced when she has an ax to grind? I think publicly declaring on national television that she has a beef with him should have automatically disqualified him from covering this story.

That becomes a moot point however the following morning when she wakes to her phone blowing up and discovers that her article has been altered, now reading the headline, "Loki's Campaign Something to Get Excited About." She's barely found out about this change when there is a knock on the door and suddenly she finds herself face to face with Thor the Goddess of Thunder. This lady must seriously be getting tired of Asgardians dropping in before she has a chance to put on something other than sleep clothes.

The next issue opens up with Loki's political ad and then running commentary from a couple of conservative news pundits. I'd say their interaction is a babbling waste, but I think that's the joke. More importantly, when I watch Loki's commercial, all I can think of is the best meme of all time.

I don't know where this fits in the timeline because this was aired maybe a day and a half after Loki announced his candidacy. When we cut back to Thor and Nisa, it's right where we left them.

Thor is not happy, thinking that Nisa is working for Loki. And being extra-canonical, Thor gets to speak like her old-school bombastic quasi-Shakespearean self and it's delightful. When Nisa points out that Loki only changed her headline and Thor actually reads the severely anti-Loki article, she delivers my favorite line of the issue: "Wow. Indeed thou dost indeed burn him."

Thor departs but not without dropping a clue for Nisa to follow, which leads her to returning to Loki's headquarters. Of course she goes while Loki is out at a rally, which only adds to his rock-star status. And everyone seems to be out of the office, as she finds abandoned... save for the cultists in Loki-robes sacrificing a goat. I don't find this as upsetting as the scary looking temple situation Loki has set up in the back of his campaign headquarters. It's an office building and that chamber has to be at least two, maybe three stories high. It makes no sense. And now my brain hurts.

Nisa makes sure that it makes it to the news and we get another visit with the talking heads, this time we have a riff on all the times politicians get caught in a scandal. In previous years, this sort of thing would be career-ending (not necessarily the fact that his constituents are non-Christian, but the fact that their ritual would probably get animal rights/welfare groups galvanized into action). But like certain politician who have been caught on tape bragging about being a sexual predator, Loki seems to be made of Teflon. He pulls the "I'm a god" card, which again, wouldn't fly in other elections and would probably be grounds for a psych eval, but here it becomes a triumphant mic drop for his supporters.

In issue #4, Nisa is going to greater lengths to expose Loki, this time investigating the Hydra agents who just happened to strike at a debate Loki just happened to be attending. They have all recently woken up from their comas and were being transferred to a medium security facility. Nisa intends to go to their new location to interview them, but the truck transporting them just happens to end up crashing in a fiery accident. So much for that idea.

But wait, why is Angela at the scene of the accident? Hm...

She knows that Loki was responsible for the Hydra attack and dispatched Angela to dispatch his catspaws. but before she can snap a picture on her phone, Angela is gone.

Back in the bizarre alternate reality known as news media outlets, a grown woman posing as a journalist (and wearing a large silly bow in her hair) is reporting on the deaths of the Hydra agents and rhetorically asks-- on national television-- who can blame them for trying to kill presidential nominees.

Okay, that does it. What the hell is up with this book?

 I mean, seriously...

There are people laughing so I can't tell if this is supposed to be some sort of Daily Show parody or if this book really thinks that poorly of American TV journalism. Regardless, this lady then suggests that Loki "sends some prison buses" to the now Doom-free Latveria. She also says she misses having Doom there because at least the trains ran on time. Is this supposed to be funny or overt support of fascism? I am so lost...

The next thing you know, Loki is partaking in a debate at the Iowa State Fair (and pulling off "folksy" quite well), and charms the viewers even as he eats one of the most improbable snacks I have seen in a lifetime of eating things nobody in their right mind should attempt to eat (one day. I will replace that Yankee Candle, mom. I promise), and now I think my life won't be complete until I have a caramel apple onion ring cheeseburger cone.

His political rivals are going for the jugular because Latvaria has become the new buzz topic in the debate and Loki has spoken out both against "Buffalo" being too accommodating with them and Enterprise skyping with Doom's children. To be fair, Doom's kid Kristoff is an expatriate living in America last I checked, so he might actually be a viable social contact.

Loki explains that he will deal with Latvaria without risking a single American life. It is such a big shock that even Nisa puts her hunt for Loki's birth record on pause to hear his declaration as he declares the only right thing is to keep boots off the ground in Latvaria and that fighting will not resolve the problem. This is actually quite reassuring to everyone else.

Nisa on the other hand, had a different takeaway from that broadcast.

She immediately buys herself a flight to Latveria, which I assume is can only lead to good things. After all the only thing safer than a dictatorial state ruled over by a egomaniacal techno-wizard is 

a former dictatorial state that has been left utterly destabilized by the sudden removal of a long-standing oppressive regime.

She passes herself off as a member of one of the factions vying for control of Latveria. Elsewhere another faction is searching for one of Doom's special hidden weapons caches. A man leads them past the mystical security door and this guy is totally not Loki guys, I swear. No really, scout's oath. When the rebels come out armed, they are confronted with the armed forces of the current controlling regime and like a bunch of idiots, they use Doom's secret weapons without testing them first and the whole battle scene goes up in a puff of smoke. The man who couldn't possibly have been Loki turns into Loki and I can't help but read this like the end of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Except that Nisa was in the right place at the right time to catch Loki expose himself on video.

This has already made the news before Nisa's plane lands in the states and the news outlets are dragging Loki across the coals. Of course, this book hates millennials and thinks they're stupid contrarians about everything and by the time Nisa arrives, the hipsters have become convinced that if the media hates Loki, he must be a real threat to their establishment and must therefore be the only candidate for them.

At this point, Nisa's about ready to give up.


By the time we open on our final issue, Nisa is looking to flee the country rather than abide by a Loki presidency. All the while, she watches footage of Loki being saved by a mentally unstable superhuman by Angela followed by whispering between the two. The next thing you know Angela has pulled out her phone and sets up a meeting with Nisa. Thor is there, as well. Apparently, the two had been in cahoots the entire time. Angela had been waiting for an opportunity to save Loki's life in order to compel him to tell her some crucial information... and she happily gives that information up to Nisa in exchange for a lifetime subscription to the Daily Bugle. It's the little things in life...

It turns out they are standing in the base of operations of the Hydra sect that attacked the debate and pulling up their computer revealed "Lucas From Buzzfeed" as their leader. Lucas? Remember him? That was Loki's disguise way back in the beginiing of the mini-series.

This gets published and of course, the millennials are completely fine with it because this book hates everyone too young to remember wondering about who shot Dallas, despite being comics' target demographic. It does however further galvanize the anti-Loki movement, causing the two opposing sides come to blows.

Chaos is erupting in the streets as Loki's fans have not been dissuaded (sound familiar, guys?) and the sitting president and congress even unanimously voted to strip the office of the president of many of its more recently acquired powers in anticipation of a Loki presidency.

Nisa is watching tenuous fabric of American life rip itself apart and the seams when there is a knock on the door and does she ever wear anything around the house besides booty shorts and a camisole? I'm guessing journalism pays the rent, but not the AC. Loki needs help-- he's doesn't want to be president, not if it means causing the nation to tear itself apart. He needs her help getting him get him discredited... which has worked so well in the past. Still, he promised not to tell a single lie in the process, and trickster deities know how sacred promises and deals are.

He instantly transports her to a live studio, changing her wardrobe in the process thankfully. He is expecting Nisa to ask all the best questions and expose him, although it's fairly obvious that he knows it would backfire, presumably to bring both sides of the aisle together in support of him. Nisa has a trick of her own however and causes and upset by handing the mic over to his supporters in the audience to ask questions, this apparently has not happened before. Not a single question has been asked by anyone other than the press. Unable to lie and unexpectedly confronted by his supporters, he's already been thrown two curveballs, However, as the questions go on, it seems like Loki has no concrete plan to address many of the problems facing the nation. Not only that, the supporters who thought he would buck the corrupt system are gobsmacked to find out he'd be working in the interests of all Americans, not just the rebellious fringe.

Nisa sums it up beautifully by asserting the only message his campaign has really delivered on was declaring "the other two candidates are bad" and that's not enough for any candidate to get even close to the presidency.

One particular audience member calls him out, feeling betrayed because Loki would rather work with the government than bring it down and Loki reaches his breaking point. You know when you're the oldest member of your social circle by a significant stretche and you finally have had enough of pretending to be cool and want to let your friends know what's what? Yeah, Loki has stopped being cool uncle Loki and calls his supporters out on the idiocy that has carried his campaign this far.

The next day is the election day and the only states that Loki ends up winning are Nevada, Nebraska, West Virginia, Mississippi, and New Jersey... because if any state will vote for someone who lies nearly all the time and treats everyone like they are morons, it's New Jersey (mwahahahaha.... Trump isn't the only one going down, Chris Christie).

We see a montage of celebration from our cast. Jane Foster in chemo looks up at the hospital television with a staid grin on her face while Angela celebrates alongside Rocket and Groot in the only bar in NYC that will serve the Guardians. Although, probably not for long since Angela's jubilant excitement causes a waitress's face to get smashed with a plateful of pie and drinks. Nisa gets tapped to appear on J Jonah Jameson's show on the Fact Channel and turns around to find Loki in her apartment. Again.

He's fairly certain he's going to lose, but he twists it into a win by suggesting that this whole story was all an overly elaborate ploy to give Nisa the chance to right the wrong that Loki caused in her childhood. Of course, she calls it for the slapdash bullshit it is, but it's more friendly than any interaction they've had thus far. Maybe it's because he's no longer a threat, or maybe it's because tricking him like she did took him down a peg enough for her to humanize him a bit, but this conversation feels genuine and less like the satirical posturing that much of the book has felt like. It's actually pretty charming.

Loki floats away as he pulls out a flip phone (he can join Cap in the anachronistic phone club) as he calls to concede to his winning opponent. Of course being Loki, he frames it like his blowup the previous night was a gift for his/her campaign. And he literally disappears into the horizon as the story ends.

This isn't a bad story by any stretch of the imagination. It's fun and moves at a good pace, but it feels unfocused. This book tries to do too much, mainly because it had too much of a good thing. There is a lot that goes into a US presidential election and this current one has been an insane cycle, so there was no shortage of material for them and in trying to genuinely capture what it feels like to be an American following the election process faithfully, the creative team ended up with a book that feels unbalanced and unwieldy in certain places. I also question the angle the satire took. The crux of Loki's campaign was because everyone thinks the candidates are so bad. We never learn why. They are super generic to the point that they could have been cardboard cut-outs. As a result, the focus of the sature becomes the inanity of the organ grinder monkeys TV news pundits and spending an incredibly large amount of time poking fun at the Bernie or Bust movement. Yeah, with all the material Trump's primary constituency has going for it, the book kept going back to the hipsters/millennial well whenever they wanted to lampoon the American public. And poking fun at millennials and the Bernie or Bust movement is fine, except for the fact that they seem to be the only ones targeted in this piece. I somehow suspect that the writers feared they'd get threats if they aimed their satire at the deplorables, and because of that I feel like the book doesn't have the courage of conviction needed to write truly spectacular social satire.

Air Quotes of Evil

Today, we're back with issue #3 of Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur. It's the last of the three issues in the Timely Comics edition, which featured the materials coming out post-Secret Wars," and collectively known as the All-New, All-Different" era, and collected the first three issues of the new publication line. In most cases, I have to wonder if that left readers unsatisfied, since the modern model for comic book storytelling puts an emphasis on pacing for collected editions, and making each arc feel like its own discrete story, often with somewhat of a resulting lack of cohesion from arc to arc. However, by the end of this issue, it will become apparent that this won't be a worry for our characters.
collected in my "Timely Comics" edition, so in a small way I feel like this is, at least for me, a close on the first chapter (or with hope, just the prologue) of this book. The "Timely Comics" editions were published a few months into the post

Let's Recap: Super-genius 9-year-old Lunella Lafayette has been reluctantly bonding with the time-displaced Devil Dinosaur while also fearing that he might eat her. DD has been reluctant to let her go home because he doesn't want to let the Nightstone/Kree Omni-Wave Projector out of his sight and Lunella is just as stubborn about leaving it behind. Meanwhile, the evil cavemen of the Killer Folk have picked up some rudimentary English  and robbed some clothes off some unsuspecting subway riders and NYC police. Lunella finally convinces DD to let her leave, Nightstone in hand, but she isn't out of Big Red's sight for a minute before she is jumped by the Killer Folk.

Before I get into the issue, let's take a moment to appreciate this cover. Remember last time, how I went on at length about the waning usage of sound effects words in comics and how they exist as a visual element in the storytelling? Well, as of this issue, I am convinced that Montclare and Reeder are making an active effort to rehabilitate the onomatopoeia in comics. I love that not only do we have Devil Dinosaur's "roar" in big yellow and pink bubble letters, but that they physically interact with the page like an actual roar would, literally being the physical force of the roar nearly blowing Lunella over. It's also a fun visualization of their dynamic, which is an ideal "show, don't tell" moment for the cover.

The inherent dangers of the self driving car.

Picking up right where left last issue, with the Nightstone in hand and Lunella apprehended, the Killer Folk are still worried about the big honking dinosaur that followed them into the future, but one of them has thrown caution to the wind, jumping up and down until he gets a car thrown on top of him. I'm going to assumed Devil Dinosaur threw that with his massive jaws because, well, T-Rex arms.

Before you get too worried that one of our protagonists just offed someone (I don't know why this is a concern, considering he's a freaking dinosaur), don't worry. They just rolled the car off him. It has a huge dent in it, but the guy seems okay. I know the Rule of Cool should probably negate logic in this instance, but I have to wonder if cavemen in the Marvel Universe are supposed to be OP. They're about the size of a modern 10-year-old child. Granted, these are warriors and average civilians in the subway could be taken unawares. Being able to get the jump on trained police officers, who have guns, tasers, mace, and a night stick is a bit more implausible, but still within the realm of possibility. Being able to walk away from having a car thrown on top of you is really where I ought to draw the line.

The car didn't even knock off his hat, let alone hurt him. 

Of course, where there is a car crashing down from above, a T-Rex can't be far behind (add that to sentences that I don't think I would have ever said), and what ensues is a positively fun "hot potato" fight sequence, of who's got the Nightstone. It ventures on positively Rube Goldbergian territory, with Lunella using a spring loaded device in her back pack to pounce on one caveman, and later one big swing of Devil Dinosaur's tail launches another caveman into the air to snatch the macguffin back from Lunella.

Ultimately, however, the Killer Folk escape with the Nightstone, and Lunella is none too pleased. And she blames Devil Dinosaur completely. I think it's an understatement to say she didn't handle it well. I'm still at a loss for why she comes across so unpleasantly in these sorts of moments because she's a nine -year-old and children are awful or if this utter deficit of basic empathy is a singularly defining character trait for her.

I appreciate the fact that they've definitely made an effort to establish this prickly temper part of her personality. It does a great job of demonstrating that she's not just a girl who is misunderstood. For as much crap as people give her, she does have some blatant personality flaws. She's got some growing up to do.

Once she has finally made her way back to the Lafayette household, her parents replay the news story about the incident in her school yard. They are none to please with what happened to her today, despite the fact that she got home in time for supper without so much as a scraped knee. Parents, amirite? They're solution to their daughter getting kidnapped by giant red T-Rexes is to forbid her from doing extra curricular science projects. Yeah, attempting to limit your child's intellectual growth-- that'll teach her not to get attacked by cavemen.

Where to begin...?

On the one hand, I'm puzzled that they honestly treat this like something she had any control over. Granted, she's little miss science, but from what we've seen of her practical applications, they mostly take the form of gadgets: sneakers with button activated roller skates, remote control snitches, and the aforementioned backpack. Blaming her for bringing a dinosaur into the present and that is ran off with her in its mouth seems like a quantum leap in her ostensible capabilities... as well as victim blaming.

On the second hand,  A DINOSAUR FROM THE DAWN OF TIME RAN OFF WITH THEIR DAUGHTER TODAY. Please take a moment to note the lack of relief at her safe return. Yeah, I'm starting to see where little miss personality gets it from.

Air quotes are the new
resting bitch face.

On the third hand (don't try to limit me to your wacky 2-handed system), is there something wrong with this family that they need to watch all their media through a wee little phone screen? I mean other than the fact that this book is aimed at millennials and millennials love them some smartphones, it doesn't make any sense. when a tv screen (just about all of which have the option of rewinding in realtime, nowadays), or even a tablet would be more pragmatic for a whole family to watch at the dinner table (which, being New York, I assume doubles as the living room). I mean, no wonder Lunella is already wearing (presumably thick) glasses if her parents are making her watch a 2"x 4" screen across the table every time something is amiss.

The next day at school, her teacher continues to demonstrate some pretty dubious efforts to relate to special and/or gifted children. She has had exactly two scenes in this series thus far and both have been defined by being condescending and abrasive towards Lunella. Okay, teachers aren't prone to appreciating a student who doesn't pay attention in class. However, the fact that she keeps singling Lunella out with a fair sense of intentionality belies some personal issues that probably ought to be addressed in counselling.

Those quotation fingers are the proverbial cherry on this insult sundae. This woman seems to make a point of taking every opportunity to infantilize Lunella. Is this this petty self-esteem issues at work or something more sinister?

Actually, these guys are a lot more personable.

The art makes her use of quotation fingers feel so labored and intentionally belittling that I'm starting to get that vibe you'd get when watching episodes of Pokemon. Whenever Jesse and James are in incredibly transparent disguises that Clark Kent would think are too obvious, but it's their shitty human interaction skills that give them away. What if she is from some clandestine shady organization that is aware of Lunella's potential and they're trying to discourage her from making a scientific breakthrough that will put her organization out of business? Okay, ridiculous headcanons aside, maybe she's just a crappy teacher.

Something tells me this woman only got a teaching degree to pay the bills as a backup until she got hired by a scientific research firm, but has been stuck in front of a classroom longer than she cares to acknowledge, the chances that she is going to make tenure are looking bleaker every day, and so now she's basically in a "fuck it" state of mind and is using her relative power to troll the only person in the room smarter than her.

Asking to be excused, Lunella goes to the girl's lavatory, where she is reminded that her peers are pretty much just as awful. Even without the relative authority of an educator, they manage to be toxic towards her by leveraging their communal social clout over her.

The girls in the bathroom are doing something involving a lit match and a roll of newspaper. Are they lighting a joint? Making a stink bomb? I find it odd that they're using match sticks when you can get a Bic lighter at any convenience store. It makes me think that this is something that would be illicit of an elementary school student and thus really out of my frame of knowledge.

Well, that's one way to get them to laugh with and not at you.
... Or maybe the other way around?

The girl holding the lit match drops and completely forgets about it when upon teasing Lunella for getting to go around with a dinosaur for a day, she roars at them like a dinosaur. And as odd a reaction as that is, it's only fitting that they get a laugh out of it. Honestly though, I'm disturbed by what these girls view as mockery material. Getting taken away by a carnivorous dinosaur and living to tell the tale should elicit only two responses: sympathy or wonder. However, considering this is a world in which superhero battles regularly cause your GPS to reroute your commute, Norse gods and mutants can disrupt weather forecasts, and a giant purple-clad alien periodically tries to eat the Earth, perhaps getting carried off by a T-Rex is about on par with getting caught throwing up a kiddie ride at an amusement park in the Marvel Universe.

Of course, this is no concern to Lunella (or is it? nothing about her inner monologue would imply that she even cares about engaging with her peers-- and yet she makes the attempt. Hm...). Instead she goes into one of the stalls and climbs into an air vent... with the lit match visible right next to toilet paper strewn on the floor.

Lunella comes out in her secret lab beneath the school. It tells you something in a story with cavemen and dinosaurs, and the looming fear of a cloud that turns you into a super-powered being, that this is what finally breaks this books already tenuous suspension of disbelief.

Can we just file this under "kids' clubhouse wish fulfillment?"

Not only does she have a secret lab in the (sub)basement of her elementary school filled with equipment that she couldn't have possibly snuck down there without someone noticing (how a 90 lb soaking wet girl managed to get it down there is also up for question, but I'm sure the creators will say she used a hover boards or some sort of comic book science), and that she even managed to hide a freaking T-Rex in there. Devil Dinosaur could not have possibly managed the height clearance needed to get into the main doors, let alone getting down into the basement. Back when I was in school, I think I might have gotten away with sneaking something ridiculous into the school, if I so chose, but contemporary schools are Fort Knox compared to what my generation grew up with, in terms of security.

But in its defense, reality is no excuse for fiction. This is a comic, an urban fantasy. And hoo boy is this place a fantasy. If I were a fourth grader, I would be over the moon to have a secret hangout like this.

Lunella is rambling on to her mute conversation companion, reiterating her objectives and concerns about her Inhuman genetics, and she manages to be both grating and endearing at the same time. Like most kids, she manages to balance being endearing and a horrible id monster.

Devil Dinosaur is distracted by a distinct smell, however. Up in the school, for some questionable reason, Montclare and Reeder chose to confuse me by cutting to a panel back in the class room where Lunella's teacher, who looks like a flat out mad scientist (more evidence to support my "she's secretly a villian" theory) as she shows the students a lit Bunsen burner. It feels like a proposed false lead that even the creators didn't feel like pursuing after one panel.

That is the face of an evil schemer. 

Instead, we head back to the bathroom where the lit match has set the bathroom ablaze. I've concluded that the only thing worse than this school's teaching staff is its safety procedures. Any accredited school conducts regular fire drills at least once per month, and each and every class room should include its own instructions for both a primary and alternate path for a safe egress. Unless that bathroom has a consciousness that targeted and surrounded the science class room, there is no reason why jumping out of a third story window. And even if this is part of their fire safety plan, it probably includes a rollup rope ladder.

"Squawk! It's a living"

Of course, now I find myself comparing this situation to the Triangle Factory Fire. And I need to stop that now before I allow a comparison of public schools to pre-union sweat shop conditions to dominate the rest of this entry.

Lunella comes up through a sewer manhole cover that she should not be able to lift by any stretch of the imagination and she tries to assess the situation until her new friend bursts onto the scene, literally bursting up through the street, causing a lot of property damage, as any self-respecting time-displaced dinosaur is wont to do. Lunella gets him to use his head back and tail to act as an emergency slide to get her classmates to safety.

This kid gets it. 

Now, before I even had a chance to reflect on what wonderful cartoon logic her solution is, one of her classmates does it for me by making a reference to The Flintstones, which subsequently gives me hope that kids really do watch classic cartoons.

Just when all is said and done, the class rescued, and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaurs are the heroes of the day, instead of a cheers and thanks, we are treated to a cameo from a character who confuses our favorite red-hued theropod for a bad guy. Because it wouldn't be a Marvel crossover unless the heroes fight first and bond later. Enter: Amadeus Cho, the Totally Awesome Hulk. Of course, Lunella being Lunella, she instantly assumes he's an idiot. Okay, as horrible as she is as a child, imagine how well prepared she's going to be for deflecting unwanted advances when she gets into her teen years.

Aw yeah! Next Issue: Me fangirling over Amadeus Cho.

This book is ridiculous and it charms the pants off me. I've said different variations on that for the past three issues, and I'm worried I'm starting to sound like a broken record.

For the next few weeks, I'm going to be doing something a little different. After all, we have officially arrived both at my favorite time of the year as well as my least favorite part of my country's four-year election cycle. I've got some ideas on how to tackle both these, but you'll have to wait and see...

Attack of the Fifty Foot Onomatopoeia

This might just be my inner 10-year-old, but everything about T-Rexes is amazing. [Sidenote: I turned 10 in the Summer of 1993 when Jurrassic Park first premiered, so I felt that way quite actively at the time.] I'm back in Marvel territory covering issue #2 of Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaurs, and readers trust me when I tell you this book is a delight.

Brief recap on Devil Dinosaur. He's from a prehistoric world called the Valley of Flame, which, depending on the era of publication, is either the past of the main timeline, an alternate reality, or a faraway planet. He's a mutant T-Rex with red skin, augmented size, strength, and intelligence, and fiery red eyes that actually look pretty amazing.

Brief Recap on Moon Girl. Lunella Lafayette is a hyper-intelligent 9-year-old girl living in Manhattan. She has trouble connecting with her parents or with anyone at school, but the latter is mitigated by the fact that she has been applying and re-applying to the various schools for super geniuses in the Marvel Universe. Her other important goal in life is to find a way to get rid of or nullify the effects of the Terrigen cloud out of concern for her well-being.

Last issue, while using her newly-invented Kree detector, Lunella found a strange glowing orb she determined to be a Kree Omni-Wave Projector, which created a portal in the middle of the school yard when her gym teacher decided to be an ass. Meanwhile, in the Valley of Flame, Devil Dinosaur and his caveboy constant companion Moon Boy battle the evil tribe of cavemen, the Killer Folk, and manage to capture their mystical totem, the Nightstone in the process. Quelle coincidence! It is a dead ringer for Lunella's Omni-Wave Projector! The Killer Folk manage to beat him within an inch of his life trying to get it back before it vanishes only to be replaced by the other side of the portal opened in present day Manhattan. The Killer Folk head into it in search after their Nightstone, and Devil Dinosaur enters in hot pursuit after Moon Boy asks to be avenged with his presumably dying words. Arriving in Lunella's schoolyard, Devil Dinosaur chases the Killer Folk and they flee to the subway. Devil Dinosaur managed to sniff out Lunella's plot relevance and takes her by the backpack as he wanders out into the streets of New York.

And now you're caught up. For a fairly simple story, there is already a lot of weird minutiae involved. Just wait and see if we ever find out this thing's history because the Omni-Wave Projector goes back deep. For now however, let's see where Devil Dinosaur was headed...

Lunella, rightfully, question whether or not this is really happening as DD stomps his way through the crowded streets of Manhattan. I have to admit I'm impressed that in her panic she has held on tight to her Kree Omni-Wave Projector (hereafter: KOWP). I'm a little confused because the first couple panels of the issue depict things from Lunella's line of vision and you can clearly make out two sets of fingers  on either side of her glasses. How the hell did she manage to cling tight to that thing? My guess is that she has a low level anti-gravity device built into her swatch watch.

This peaceful, if whiny, trek through the city comes to a grinding halt however when he is assaulted by sound effects! Sound effects with police officers attached! It's actually pretty wonderful how much the use of sound effects plays out as a visual component of the storytelling in this sequence. The use of onomatopoeia  has fallen out of popularity in the past couple decades as comics have skewed more towards dour realism, but the way they interact with the panel can range anywhere from madcap to unsettling.

Fortunately, this is an all ages story, so we get mainly wacky hijinks sound effects as DD crunches the hood of one car under his foot and his tail sends another crashing into a fire hydrant. With the car sirens running, guns shooting, water gushing, and every one of DD's own movements causing a rumble all their own, it becomes a cacophony of  noises that even drown out the word balloons. Since DD is functionally a mute character, it's a great way of demonstrating his POV.

As someone with attention deficit, this entire page speaks to me.

I know that in the past couple years, police departments across the US have been under deep scrutiny because of various very legitimate claims of abuse of power, particularly toward the African American community, but in a such a fun and apolitical book like this, I can't help but believe that these police officers shooting at Devil Dinosaur when he has a young girl of color dangling from his incisors was not intended as social commentary, particularly because the officers are black and latina, respectively. Instead, I'm arriving at the conclusion that this book functions heavily on the notion that adults are useless and/or incompetent. Five minutes in Lunella's POV makes that painfully apparent.

To get his attention, Lunella has to grab a remote control golden snitch out of her bag. Again, she is keeping that KOWP from falling from superior thigh strength or something. And no, I wasn't exaggerating. It pretty much is a golden snitch. It's a little, golden flying insect. And the remote control looks like  Good thing she guessed that theropods aren't color blind because the shiny thing makes all the other sensory stimuli vanish. Congratulations, Lunella. You have mastered the art of the dangling carrot technique.

Again, her inner monologue shows a bit of a disconnect from the action at hand, albeit less so than last issue's instance. She's analyzing the scientific problem, yes, but the immediacy of being suspended in the air with only a dinosaur's tooth separating her from a long fall seems to be helping her stay grounded in what needs to be done in the moment. Of course, summing it up as "I have to get rid of the big, red lamebrain," does not help endear me toward her.

That;s using your head, DD.

However, the impromptu planning session goes flies out the door when the KOWP slips out of her arms and she reaches to save it in a big swooping gesture, only to completely forget about the remote control. It falls to the ground with a "drop" sound effect. The snitch dies in the air and DD seems to regain his focus, as though the snitch had a hypnotic effect on him. And he is did not wake up on the right side of the bed because he lets out a roar (without dropping the girl hanging, so acknowledge the skills) and goes on a combination rampage/battering ram session as he plows his way through street lights, cars, mailboxes, and buildings, using his big old noggin.

Meanwhile, the Killer Folk are down in the NYC Subway-- at Yancy Street Station, to be precise. Again, that's another continuity gem ridden in the rough of this story which neither of our protagonists are at all aware of and won't get paid off until next time, so I won't spoil the surprise just yet. From the shadows, Thorn-Teeth, Gurf, Rachacha, Tharg, and Thok (your guess is as good as mine which one is which) observe the world they now find themselves in: the language, the clothes, the exchange of money for goods and services, etc.

Then we are treated to a page-long argument, but whereas last issue their language was translated for the reader's benefit, now we sit through a page of the writer's made up language accompanied by some wild gesticulations. It's like when an idiot finds themselves confronted with someone who doesn't speak English so they start shouting all their words, saying them slowly and making huge motions, as though one could break the language barrier by sheer force of will. I seem to remember Jackie Chan's character in Shanghai Noon attempting this relentlessly with a tribe of Native Americans. Their solution was peyote. No, it didn't solve the language gap, but at least he shut up.

The more he gestures, the less we understand.

You get the impression that none of the Killer Folk who made it through the portal represent their traditional leadership, and now there is a bit of a struggle for command as they try to settle course of action to take. They do all commit to a plan and launch an assault on the unsuspecting commuters and we hear them uttering a few words of English.

I think the intent in the writing is that we are supposed to be shocked that a bunch of Homo Habiles are already picking up modern speech in what could have only been an hour or two at most, but I'm honestly kind of shocked that in the cultural melting pot that is Manhattan Island, they miraculously managed to only overhear anglophones. English makes up only 51% of the languages spoken in New York, so the fact that we don't have a weird mashup of English, Chinese, Hindi, and Russian seems like a longshot granted by the nature of the medium.

They got swagger. 

Improbable foreign language immersion aside, the next thing we see, it's night and the Killer Folk come up from out of the subway, now bedizened in contemporary apparel, albeit not always worn appropriately. One of them has a necktie around his neck while another is wearing a wrist watch around his bicep. It's worth applauding the fact that the artist resisted the temptation to put the one female member of the contingent in gender specific clothes. After all, it's likely that these guys aren't even all that high up in their world's food chain, so I suspect the concept of a socially constructed gender binary and its relation to apparel is a bit beyond their understanding. Of course, the fact that the token girl is wearing a purse for a hat should make that perfectly clear in far fewer words.

Meanwhile, under a bridge (it's where all the cool mutant T-Rexes hang out these days), Lunella and Devil Dinosaur seem to be squabbling over the KOWP. Lunella seems to have pieced together that DD has near human sentience because she's actually talking to him rationally. Neither one of them is holding the KOWP and it seems to be the crux of their fighting. She just wants to go home, but he is not letting the KOWP out of his sight.

Sad DD is the most huggable DD.

Now, I know I'm going to be saying this a lot in my coverage of this title, but Devil Dinosaur's expressions are adorable. Yes, the giant carnivore is cuter than the little girl. The one panel that particularly hit home was when Lunella accuses him of not knowing what it's like to have a family to go home to when we the reader know that DD lost the only family he's ever had minutes before arriving in our world. His eyes go from their usual fiery appearance to small and low as he looks down at her and grumbles "Rr-roo..." And my heart just goes out to this poor soul. I suppose it's only fair to acknowledge that I kind of hate humanity with a vengeance right now (I keep reminding myself that the election season is almost over), so I'll invariably relate to the plight of a sad animal over a human being in a heartbeat.

Of course, Lunella has her motivations as well. She explains that she needs it to somehow prevent the Terrigen cloud hovering in the atmosphere from eventually infecting and transforming her. Apparently, she has somehow deduced that she has the Inhuman gene.

I don't know which subsequent question this raises to be more interested in. Is the existence of the Inhumans now so common knowledge to the general populace that they now have access to self-administered tests to detect their Inhuman heritage? Am I right in understanding that neither of her parents tested positive for the gene? It's already a recessive gene to begin with so I'm starting to wonder why. Of course, we could later discover that they aren't her birth parents, but this wouldn't be the first instance of the family member of a newly activated Inhuman not being Inhuman too, such as Ms Marvel's brother Aamir, whose body rejected it either because he's a latent mutant or he prayed it away/has denial issues.

"Dumb dog, why are you following me?
I ain't got a crumb, dog. How about letting me be?"

Devil Dinosaur does finally let her go with the KOWP in hand unimpeded. He does try following her, but it's adorable how she treats him like a dog she found, telling him "No! Stay!" Of course, being a dutiful T-Rex, he looks pretty dejected that his new friend his giving him the brush off. I think it's only fair to acknowledge that Lunella is kind of awful, but in ways that feel very much in keeping with being a nine-year-old and a child genius. She is so used to thinking she is always the smartest person in the room that she is frequently (unintentionally) belittling to those around her, but we are only on issue #2 on what I hope will be a very long run, so this is a good place to start and give her room to grow as a person. Despite her pronounced lack of people skills, she does have the wherewithal to thank him for not eating her.

Of course, she's not out of his line of vision before we hear her shouting and getting cut off mid-sentence. Concerned, Devil Dinosaur searches high and low for her, including under a truck under a dumpster, and up in the moon. Okay, You know how I said he has quasi-human intelligence? Maybe it's mitigated by the fact that people are getting stupider these days. His IQ must adjust to the median human intelligence whenever he's transported to the modern day. Yes, that's just head canon to explain his hunting prowess. He's a goddamn T-Rex for crying out loud, the girl isn't going to be under a dumpster. Of course, the more I think about the part with the moon, that was probably a moment of Devil Dinosaur remembering another friend he lost just recently and having a moment of quiet reflection.

Not to far away, we see what has befallen Lunella as she is in the clutches of the Killer Folk, who have procured an even better grasp on the English language, as well as some police equipment, having recently gotten the jump on some of New York's finest. Okay, I can understand a couple of cops being no match for a T-Rex, but a bunch of cavemen about the size of 3rd-grader? Wow, even for a world full of super beings, these cops fail to measure up.

This book continues to be a charming romp of a book. While there are no actual "deal breaker" problems with it, I do feel it's only fair to acknowledge that it does some acrobatics in order to achieve some of its ends, primarily the Killer Folk learning English in an afternoon, but otherwise this book has components that I think of as classic Marvel. One of our leads is effectively a misunderstood monster with a heart of gold and the other is a super genius as out of step in the modern day as the dinosaur is. Throwing them together and allowing for that push and pull between them brings something to the table that feels both timeless and fresh and I'm very much enjoying where this title is going.