Wednesday, September 7, 2016

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. 



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