moon girl and devil dinosaur

This weekend saw the eleventh annual Glyph Awards held in Philadelphia, at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention. The awards, founded by Rich Watson over a decade ago, celebrate comics made by, for, and starring black people, but are not necessarily limited to black creators.

Welcome to Cast Party, the feature that imagines a world with even more live action comic book adaptations than we currently have, and comes up with arguably the best casting suggestions you’re ever going to find for the movies and shows we wish could exist. This week we're focused on a current comic for the first time in a while, and imaging a movie based on Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, by Amy Reeder, Brandon Montclare, and Natacha Bustos.

Marvel Comics will reprint the first three issues of several of its All-New, All-Different comics under the imprint Timely Comics. Debuting in June, Timely Comics presents the opening issues of these series in one oversized comic, at the reduced price of $2.99. The initiative offers readers the chance to catch up on cornerstones of the Marvel Universe like All-New, All-Different Avengers and Invincible Iron Man, but it also features collections of critical darlings such as Doctor Strange and Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, providing an easy access point for readers to try something new.

Ms. Marvel has won the second annual Dwayne McDuffie Award For Diversity In Comics at a ceremony held this weekend at Long Beach Comic Expo. Aside from honoring Ms. Marvel and other diverse works being published today, the event celebrated the life and career of the late McDuffie, with friends and collaborators in attendance to share stories and lessons from the legendary creator.

Five nominees have been announced for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics, which will be given at the Long Beach Comic Expo on February 20th. The award is meant to recognize work that promotes diversity in comics, whether on the page or on the creative side, and is named for the late Dwayne McDuffie, who was an outspoken advocate for diversity through his work in comics and animation.

It's no secret that white male leads have dominated comic books since --- well forever. In the '60s, Marvel and DC finally started to put a change to that with the addition of super-powered people of color, which led to some of today's biggest names in comics. But it still wasn't enough. Eventually the lack of diversity led to the onset of Milestone Media in the '90s, where Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, and Derek T. Dingle crafted several intriguing characters. With an increasingly active black nerd, or blerd, community, new black characters are being created every day --- primarily through independent publishers, though Marvel has also kickstarted a focus on one of its most notable black characters --- but more on that later. To celebrate Black History Month, ComicsAlliance is running down our list of 20 Great Black Comic Book Characters. Our list considers old staples as well as some new favorites, including a certain katana wielding badass, space explorers and of course, plenty of superheroes.

The first issue of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is a perfect introduction to Moon Girl, whose given name is Lunella Lafayette. Lunella is a nerd. Like, a big nerd. She’s the sort of kid who hates school because it doesn’t challenge her, and the other kids make fun of her for knowing so much. She’s the sort of kid who wears a T-shirt with a realistic picture of the moon on it (which is also a nice meta-joke about the idea of “Moon Girl” as a conventional superhero identity). Basically, Moon Girl is exactly the sort of kid who reads comics. Or at least, she’s the sort of kid who reads comics if kids still read comics. And Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is the sort of comic (along with books like Squirrel Girl and Lumberjanes) that gives me hope that kids reading comics might still be a thing, or could become a thing again. At least there are comics we can feel good about handing them to keep that hope alive.

When Marvel unveiled its post-Secret Wars line-up, it was a strangely lacking in surprises. The announcements were front-loaded with a couple of awesome and important reveals, including Miles Morales as Spider-Man, and Miles and Kamala as Avengers, but given the scale of the opportunity of a line-wide relaunch, it felt surprisingly familiar and unambitious, even compared to past Marvel line-up launches that brought readers Ms Marvel and the new Thor. Where were the new ideas? Where were the new voices? Today we learned of the upcoming launch of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur from the creative team of writers Amy Reeder and Brandon Montclare and artist Natacha Bustos. There we go; that's the stuff we want to see.