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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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?" |
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.
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