“One girl can make a difference.”
That’s the mantra of Lunella Lafayette, a
precocious, Afro puff-sporting, 13-year-old New Yorker whose alter ego is the
crime-fighting Moon Girl. It’s an empowering credo meant to inspire any young
girl — even those who do not have superhuman ingenuity and a 10-tonne
Tyrannosaurus rex for a sidekick.
اضافة اعلان
In the animated series “Marvel’s Moon Girl
and Devil Dinosaur”, Lunella exerts as much of her formidable brain power
fretting over regular teen stuff, like school cliques and social media “likes”,
as she does blasting supervillains and building incredible gadgets. These
include the interdimensional portal that inadvertently welcomes her dinosaur
friend into her world.
“I wrote a list of all of the things that I
grew up struggling with,” said Diamond White, the singer and actress who voices
Lunella. Some of those experiences — like getting her hair relaxed for the
first time — were filtered into the show. “She goes through her insecurities
and battles that you don’t have to be a superhero to go through — it’s just the
experience of a Black girl growing up.”
The young superheroine trend
Executive produced by Laurence Fishburne,
Helen Sugland, and Steve Loter, “Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” premiered
Friday on the Disney Channel and on February 15 on Disney+.
The series is part of a recent wave of
superhero shows centered on young heroines of color. Last year brought the CW’s
“Naomi”, an action-drama about a Black teen superhero plucked from DC Comics,
and “Ms. Marvel”, about a Pakistani American Marvel fan in New Jersey who
obtains her own powers. Later in 2023, Disney+ plans to add live-action series
“Echo”, following the Native American comics hero who made her screen debut in
“Hawkeye” (played by Alaqua Cox), and “Ironheart”, about the ingenious Tony
Stark mentee who appeared in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (played by
Dominique Thorne).
“She goes through her insecurities and battles that you don’t have to be a superhero to go through — it’s just the experience of a Black girl growing up.”
Lunella was a nine-year-old whiz kid when
the comic Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, written by Amy Reeder and Brandon
Montclare, debuted in November 2015. The original run ended in 2019, but a new
Moon Girl series debuted in December 2022.
Loter, who directed the series, said the
character was made over as a teenager for TV partly because “We knew that social
media would play a large part of Lunella’s world, and we wanted to make sure
she was at an age to be making use of it.”
“We focused every episode on a relatable
emotion that we all would have but that is particularly intense to a
13-year-old — this episode’s about impatience; this episode’s about jealousy,”
he added. “Then we would find a way to have the antagonist mirror that theme
from the real world to the superhero world.”
‘Smarter than Tony Stark’
There are other variations from the
original storyline, including the addition of new characters, such as Lunella’s
cooler-than-thou best friend, Casey (voiced by Libe Barer), and the omission of
well-known heroes that Moon Girl has teamed up with on the page (such as
Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Doctor Strange).
“We can’t really tell those stories that
are in the books; those stand alone,” said Fishburne, who voices the Beyonder,
an intergalactic trickster. He said that proprietary issues hindered the television
show from incorporating some of the heroes depicted within the Marvel Cinematic
Universe.
“In terms of being true to the comic book,
Lunella is the smartest person in the Marvel universe,” Fishburne said. “She’s
smarter than Tony Stark; she’s smarter than Reed Richards of the Fantastic
Four. Lunella really being this super-intellect whose superpower is her brain,
that’s really where we’re holding fast to the source material.”
A relatable superhero
Fishburne and Sugland, his longtime
producing partner, have been championing Black Girl Magic for years, going back
to the moving 2006 family film “Akeelah and the Bee”, starring a preteen Keke
Palmer in her first lead role. His motivation for telling stories about
remarkable Black girls is simple, he said: “I’m the father of two remarkable
Black girls.”
White said she was excited for the series
even before she knew she would be starring in it. “I was just like, ‘Finally!’”
she said. “It’s something that little me needed to see — I didn’t grow up with
a cartoon like this.”
The Lunella of the series is warmer and
friendlier than her more peevish comic book counterpart, but she possesses the
same prodigious mental might. She is quick to cuddle with her, er, pet (whose
grunts and roars are provided by voice actor Fred Tatasciore) and enjoys the
support of her roller rink-owning family, voiced by Jermaine Fowler, Gary
Anthony Williams, Alfre Woodard, and Sasheer Zamata. Guest voice actors include
Jennifer Hudson, astronaut Dr Mae Jemison, Cobie Smulders, and Wesley Snipes.
“It’s something that little me needed to see — I didn’t grow up with a cartoon like this.”
“Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” has already
been renewed for a second season, and according to White, there are plans to
“go deeper and get more emotional”. Another chapter offers more opportunities,
as Fishburne put it, to “use the whole fantasy element to illuminate basic
human stuff”.
“It’s great to see a superhero,” he
continued. “But it’s even better when you can relate to them.”
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