None other than Laurence Fishburne dropped us a holiday gift with a preview of “Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.” Though brief, we got a glimpse of a psychedelic color palette, highly stylized action, and of course our titular heroes.
The series is based on the Marvel comic that ran from 2015 – 2019. It centers around Lunella Lafayette who was actually named the smartest hero in the entire Marvel Universe. This puts her ahead of geniuses like Tony Stark or Reed Richards. She’s also only thirteen years old! She carries the Inhuman gene. Her powers also allow her to trade consciousnesses with Devil Dinosaur.
Devil Dinosaur was introduced in 1978 and was originally partnered with Moon-Boy. He is literally a dinosaur. He has appeared in various comics off and on through Marvel’s history since then, but his longest run has been through his partnership with Lunella (aka Moon Girl). Moon-Boy passes the proverbial partnership torch to Lunella in the beginning of their comic run.
Lunella will be voiced by Diamond White who has a robust voice acting career. She’s also ben on “Dear White People”, “Empire”, and “The Bold and the Beautiful.” The voice cast also includes Fishburne as The Beyonder, Alfre Woodard, Sasheer Zamata, Gary Anthony Williams, Libe Barer, and Jermaine Fowler. Fred Tatascoire will be voicing Devil Dinosaur. Of note Woodard has already done service in the Marvel universe in “Luke Cage.” Fishburne is also serving as an executive producer for the series along with Helen Sugland.
It’s very exciting to see Marvel continue to push the style boundaries of their offerings. Also to continue to highlight their heroes of color (and also heroes of reptilian backgrounds???).
The animated series will air on Disney Channel in summer of 2022.
