Ok, I have been meaning to review this for awhile.  I love so many things about this comic, at least the volumes collected in the first graphic novel.

Lunella Lafayette is smart.  Smarter than Amadeus Cho, Tony Stark, and many other folks.  She also carries the gene that can be activated by the terragen mists, and is obsessed with preventing any changes that contact with said mists might trigger.  She feels like she is already different enough.  And apparently her parents are ascribing to the school of thought my parents ascribed to and are not jumping her ahead grades.  (Not that I think I’m as smart as Moon Girl, but it’s really frustrating either being bored out of your head because the lessons are shit you can do in your sleep, or being a reading group of one, a math group of one, etc…) Seriously, I felt a lot of Moon Girl’s pain.

Elsewhere/when, a group of what looks to be Australopithecus are worshipping a Kree artifact, and killing others of their kind as sacrifices.  Another Australopithecus riding Devil Dinosaur attacks.  The Kree artifact opens a hole in dimensions and pulls the bad Australopithecus and Devil Dinosaur through.

Amadeus Cho in Hulk form comes along to “help,” and locks up Devil Dinosaur, letting the bad guy Australopithecus go free.  They learn to imitate human culture and become a street gang.

I gotta say, Amadeus Cho comes off a like an arrogant jerk in this one.  I haven’t really read any other titles with him in them, so I’m not sure if that’s consistent, but he’s really kind of an ass.

Lunella is frustrated by her inability to get anyone to listen to her. And breaks Devil Dinosaur out of the basement of the museum, where he’s being kept. And they go in search of the Kree artifact.

Seriously, this comic is so freaking adorable, I love the art.  And it conveys the frustrations inherent in being a “gifted child,” really well.  Everyone expects you to act like a freaking adult, but they refuse to treat you like one or listen to you like one. Your “peers” aren’t, and you frequently get bullied for being smart.

An awful lot of Lunella’s personality felt so incredibly relatable to me.

As well as that annoying weirdness inherent in being a smart kid. While I agree that there is a lot more than raw intelligence involved in figuring shit out or knowing what you’re doing, there’s an awful lot of frustration in people assuming your intelligence expands only to math, spelling and reading comprehension.*

I really enjoyed the hell out of this collection.  I highly recommend this for comics fans of all ages.

*I admit, trying to read 2001 as a 10 year old was unsuccessful because I did not have a lot of the context around motivations and actions because of lack of experience.  But I also read Leaves of Grass around that time and had no time figuring out what Whitman was talking about, leading to my first really awkward sex conversation with my parents.

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