On Saturday, Delancey Street took a detour through the Javits Center when a panel promoting the new Disney Channel cartoon series Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur came to New York Comic Con 2022. Editor and writer Allegra Frank hosted the panel about the Lower East Side-based show, debuting on February 10. Joining Frank was the voice of Lunella Lafeyette, Diamond White, the ubiquitous Fred Tatasciore, who plays Devil Dinosaur, Gary Anthony Williams, who plays Pops, executive producer Steve Loter, supervising producer Rodney Clouden, and producer Pilar Flynn.
“It starts with Laurence Fishburne in a comic store,” Loter started, speaking of the unlikely path Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur took to being realized. The movie megastar discovered the comic on his weekly run to the LCS and decided it was a story that more people needed to see. He got in touch with Loter, who knows a thing or two about female protagonists after his work on Kimpossible, and they got to work making a TV show happen.
For the unfamiliar, Lunella is a super genius who, in this series, is also fascinated with music. “Lunella is obsessed with all things science,” White said, and even took the time to learn the language of the interdimensional-traveling Devil Dinosaur. Tatasciore conjured various grunts and snorts, which White translated as Devil wanting hot dogs.
“He will do anything for her,” Tatasciore said of Devil Dinosaur. “He’s a 10-ton dog, basically,” Tatasciore said, revealing that Devil also likes to paint!
“Years ago, Pops opened up a rollerskating rink,” Williams said of his character, Lunella’s grandfather. Unlike most in his day, Pops’ rink wasn’t segregated, and he still maintains it to this day. “He’s a super loving dude,” Williams said. “Very community-based kinda fella.”
“It was really important to show a black family dynamic in a positive light,” Clouden said. “Growing up when I was younger, I didn’t have a black cartoon to watch,” White said. “There’s an episode where [Lunella] tries to straighten her hair, and of course, it goes awry. That happened to me!” White said she needed that as a child and is glad today’s kids will get to see it. Flynn also mentioned that all of the current writers and directors of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are female.
The panel spoke about how the art and New York City are also characters in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. “The animation style is immediately striking,” Frank said. “New York, in a lot of animated shows, has been misrepresented,” Clouden said. “It’s not slick, it’s gritty.” The show is still colorful, as they used actual graffiti artists throughout. Loter called it a very “pen and ink” style, which makes Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur feel like a comic book.
The music is also extremely important, so much so that Loter stood in line at a record store in Los Angeles to ask a founding member of Tony! Toni! Toné! Raphael Saadiq in person if he’d compose it. “So I got a signed record, and I signed him to the show,” Loter said. The crowd was then surprised when Saadiq appeared to sit on the panel. After Loter called him a genius, Saadiq pushed back with the Prince’s quote, “I’m not a genius, I just practice a lot.”
Loter dropped the bombshell that Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur has already been renewed before the first episode even airs, on the way to show the crowd the first two minutes of that debut episode. In the clip, Lunella roller skates around her neighborhood, meeting the local characters in a scene filled with color and what feels like ’80s hip-hop updated for the 21st century.
A short Q&A session revealed more about Fishburne’s on-screen character, the Beyonder, who has his character arc and sings a Broadway-style musical number at one point! Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur will be an episodic series while still developing a narrative that culminates at the end.
Join the AIPT Patreon
Want to take our relationship to the next level? Become a patron today to gain access to exclusive perks, such as:
- ❌ Remove all ads on the website
- 💬 Join our Discord community, where we chat about the latest news and releases from everything we cover on AIPT
- 📗 Access to our monthly book club
- 📦 Get a physical trade paperback shipped to you every month
- 💥 And more!
You must be logged in to post a comment.