Written by: Brandon Montclare
Art by: Natacha Bustos, Tamra Bonvillain, and VC’s Travis Lanham
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 5, 2018

Coming over to the Marvel side of things, I was given advice on what characters and what books to follow. Of course, the usual suspects (Avengers, X-Men…) were well represented, but being the (hidden) non-conformist that I pretend to be, I searched out books that were a bit more on the perimeter. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur was one of those books. Sure, I had no idea what a Terrigen Mist was at that point, but I quickly fell in love with Lunella and her adventures with Devil Dinosaur. Fast forward to Fresh Start, and with all the stuff going down with starting a podcast and site, I fell behind on this book. Well, I am here to rectify that situation and this is a pretty good issue to start back on reviewing this book.

This issue starts off the Bad Dream story and it’s about as good a jumping on (or back) point as any. It starts with Lunella amongst the who’s who of the big brains of the MCU and she isn’t just holding her own but is tasking them all to just get along.

It’s a cold open that gets warmer as Lunella eats breakfast with her family and tells her dad that she’s been having bad dreams lately. Yep, she said the name of the story and it’s a theme that will continue with most of the characters in the book.

The first thing that will probably pop out at the reader opening this book is Natacha Bustos’ art. You can kind of use it as a litmus test…if it doesn’t make you smile right away, this may not be the book for you. Sure, that also means you have no soul, but I’m not here to judge. I love it and if you have any youngsters around that you want to get into comics, I’m sure they would too. I know that “all-ages” has become a bit of a bad phrase to some, but not to me. It’s jsut another big reason I love this book.

We follow Lunella as she goes to school, gets bored quickly and that’s when we see that she isn’t the only one…having bad dreams that is. After an epic fail playing dodgeball it’s off to the lab and Devil Dinosaur. My favorite part of the entire issue was watching Lunella shimmy through the vents to get to her lab.

We don’t get much of DD as he is also asleep and before she can say “Jack Kirby”, so is she. Lunella enters the Dream Dimenson and meets Bad Dream, a kid demon straight out of Where the Wild Things Are who is causing all the mayhem. There are a couple of battles and the issue ends with Lunella wondering if she is awake or still dreaming as it seems as if the Dream Dimension has come to the real world and that can’t be a good thing, right?

The biggest compliment I can give this issue is it just made me happy reading it. I’ve mentioned how much I love Lunella a couple times already and Brandon Montclare makes sure to highlight that to anyone jumping on with this story. Sure, most of what we get here is setup, but I want to see what goes on next especially after seeing who is on the cover of next issue.

Final Thoughts:

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is a great all-ages book and that’s something that’s hard to find nowadays. This issue starts a new story arc and Brandon Montclare makes it a good jumping on point for new readers and Natacha Bustos’ art makes me smile. I’d easily recommend this issue to anyone looking for a book to get younger readers involved in the hobby, but also to anyone looking for some light in what has become a pretty dark landscape of books.

8.5/10