The Disney Channel has added another superhero property to its collection of animated shows with the release of Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. This joins Spidey and His Amazing Friends as the current Marvel-themed shows airing on the network. The newest addition is certainly outside the box as it doesn't carry with it the fanfare that Spider-Man possesses or have the longevity of comic book lore, either. Moon Girl was a creation of Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder and the duo was introduced with a 47-issue run that began with Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1 in 2015 and lasted into 2019. The second half of this pair has a longer span in the comics with Devil Dinosaur #1 (1978) getting its own nine-issue run from the legendary mind of Jack Kirby.
Being a newer character to the scene, Disney Television Animation, who is producing this series, has the luxury of adjusting her backstory and her personality without receiving much pushback, unlike if they were to do something drastic with a hero like Spidey — even if it's just in a 30-minute kids show. Anyone who read the Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur comics will notice quite a few changes to her origins and how she acts within the context of the new show, which is already slated for a second season. It's understandable why some of these alterations were made, considering the medium and how similar characters have had their origins adjusted on the small and big screens to better fit the story.
How Moon Girl’s Origins Changed
When comic readers opened up that first issue of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur they were greeted with the presence of Lunella Lafayette (Diamond White), a 9-year-old girl in New York City. She has smarts that far surpass her peers, and she loves to come up with new inventions. When it comes to the show, Lunella was aged up to be 13 years old and unlike her print portrayal, she isn’t lacking an outgoing personality. What the show aimed to steer clear of was the bullying and ostracizing that surrounded Lunella in the comics and how her Moon Girl moniker stemmed from kids teasing her for how smart she is, as she is seen in class sketching designs for a Kree Detector. Even her teacher is seen calling her “Little Miss-Know-It-All” in class and a group of girls bully her in the bathroom, so it's no wonder the animated series opted to rewrite this angle.
The most notable change to her character’s makeup, though, is that she no longer is an Inhuman. This sticks with the trend of Marvel reworking heroes who previously had the Inhuman gene in the comics ever since the colossal failure that was ABC’s Inhumans (which lasted only eight episodes before being canceled). Disney+ ended up turning the character of Ms. Marvel into a mutant rather than an Inhuman. Ironically, in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #7, Ms. Marvel is shown on a projector aboard the Nova Hala IV in Kree Territory as Mel-Varr is attempting to find the least powerful Inhuman and ends up coming across Moon Girl. It made sense why Marvel was removing any ties to Inhumans as they didn’t want any confusion within their MCU, but it’s pretty telling just how much they want to be detached from that disaster that they’re even changing things on a Disney Channel show. Instead of being an Inhuman, Lunella is just a regular girl whose superpower is her creative mind. It’s with this immense intelligence that the show also can rework the way that she and Devil Dinosaur (Fred Tatasciore) end up meeting.
The Introduction of Devil Dinosaur
With a much longer shelf life in the comic world, Devil Dinosaur first was linked with Moon Boy, a native of the Small Folk who was a group of hunter-gatherers. The two came to be inseparable when the latter helped take care of him after watching the Killer Folk burn his mom to death and two of his siblings. The near-death experience in the flames ended up transforming the creature as his skin turned red from the flames and thus began the story of Devil Dinosaur. There was no way a story like this was going to carry over into a children’s show so none of the character’s backstory is brought into the series. The Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur comics saw the latter enter Earth-616 by way of the Nightstone after the Killer Folk entered a vortex, eventually seeing Moon-Boy die in this altercation and Devil Dinosaur following the group through the portal. Steering clear of any death storylines or anything having to do with a group called the Killer Folk, the animated series simply had Devil Dinosaur pop up in Lunella’s world after she accidentally brought him in through her portal invention, which she had intended to be a generator, but it was far more powerful.
There is clearly some overhauling of the character’s origins done with this series but none of it really takes away from the hero’s ethos. Through a handful of episodes that were released on February 15, it’s clear this show is aiming to capture a young audience but attach enough appearances and callbacks that any age will appreciate. There’s an entire episode with The Beyonder, who's quite an important character in Marvel lore and has a whole narrative tied around the famous Battleworld arc.
The show’s first episode also brought in Aftershock, a villain associated with Spider-Man, and the third episode saw Gravitas serve as the antagonist. The Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur comics saw a handful of fun crossovers, including The Incredible Hulk entering her world in the third issue. While it’s unlikely he pops up in the show, there was already a fun Wakanda reference in the sixth episode that saw the students competing to win a Science Fair where the prize was a trip to the Wakanda Outreach Center in Manhattan. The overall tone of the comics certainly translates well with the world of animation and the fun back-and-forth between her and Devil Dinosaur, who is just one big, lovable dog, makes for an easy story to latch on to. It’s also refreshing to see her costume from the comics replicated in the series, including her roller skates. In the comics, her parents are never fleshed out, but the show did a clever job of having them run a family-owned roller skating rink, adding another layer of understanding to the intricacies of her outfit.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are now airing on The Disney Channel and Disney+.