Topic: MARVEL's Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur
https://next-episode.net/moon-girl-and-devil-dinosaur
"Bravery is what you do when you're flat out scared."
After numerous blackouts cause everything to shut down in the Lower East Side of New York, Lunella Lafayette [a 13-year-old genius living with her parents and grandparents] decides the only way to keep their family's business running. She builds what she thinks is a generator, but it turns out to be a portal generator that summons a dinosaur. With the Dino, Casey Calderon [a social media influencer] in tow they encounter an electricity-based villain, the culprit behind the blackouts. With the support of her Grandma Mimi and the LES backing her up, Moon Girl & Devil Dino become the new heroes of the Lower East Side!
Lunella Lafayette "Moon Girl" - a gifted 13-year-old girl who lives a double life as a superheroine after accidentally bringing a dinosaur into present-day New York.
Devil Dinosaur - a red Tyrannosaurus accidentally brought to present-day New York
Casey Calderon- Lunella's manager and best friend and social media representative.
Mimi & Pops - Lunella's grandmother and father.
Aria & James - Lunella's mother and father.
Separating an adaptation form it's source material can be difficult for fans of any story that makes the jump from one medium into another, whether it novel to movie or comic book to animated series. As a long time reader of Moon Girl & Devil Dino this reimagining seemed just a dizzying as the most aggressively reimagined MCU introduction.
I had so many question as to what the status quo was for this series, which having read every issue of MG&DD could not answer for... for instance, Why hasn't Lu exclaimed that she is the smarted person on the planet multiple times? Not to mention who are most of these side characters? In the comics Moon Girl mostly interacts with the larger MARVEL universe of characters or the story's villains than adults or fellow students.
The reason I wanted to watch this series was because of how much I enjoyed the irreverent Inspector Gadget vibes full of MARVEL universe in-jokes creating a mixture of old campy laughs and adventure for all ages of comic book fans. It may not have been a comic which reinvented the wheel but it also wasn't the same old story told the way many YA's readers have traditionally come to expect from the comic book giant.
MG&DD was light, even absurdist, like when a hand full of time-lost cavemen became a local gang in Lunella's neighborhood. And even if the Disney+ series does keep some of the elements from the comics it's built it's own mythos [almost as if it should be it's own thing not an adaptation at all, but I know that's asking... well the bare minimum and we know no one is willing to do that because, despite the massive amount of options we rarely see something which isn't part of established IP].
This adaptation felt more like it merged elements of more traditional YA series [specifically a dash of Ms. Marvel] and to be fair it might have been impossible to expect a the comics to be translated into motion as they were... I'm sure readers of the Graphix Cleopatra in Space books had similar feels when they watched the DreamWorks Animation Television adaptation.
So, while it may be sleek, have a good soundtrack and some boast excellent representation... sadly it's also seems as though it not what I came here for!? Which is fine, not everything is for everyone, In fact, I do not believe the creators of the series expected or wanted comic book fans to actually watch this series. I may never get over my preconceived expectations enough to enjoy this series, that many others already indicate they do, however I'll have to give it a few more episodes before I can make a final verdict!
Anyone else have an opinion?
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