The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur comic books and omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated February 2023 with titles scheduled for release through August 2023.
Reading and Collecting Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur
(& Moon-Boy, too!)
Moon Girl is an pint-sized pre-teen who is a potential Inhuman and who might be the smartest person in the world but who also sometimes shares a brain with a vicious red T-Rex.
And that’s not even the weirdest part of the history of Devil Dinosaur!
Devil Dinosaur was the final Big Two creation of comics legend Jack Kirby, who co-created most of Marvel’s pantheon of super-heroes (and all of its pantheon of Asgardian’s gods!) with Stan Lee before creating the entire Fourth World at DC, including Darkseid and Mister Miracle.
Kirby’s return to Marvel was a major coup, and while he was there he penned legendary runs on Captain America and Black Panther, and created The Eternals. His last work was much farther off the beaten path. Devil Dinosaur was a book completely devoid of gods and superheroes, but full of rough and tumble Mesozoic action for his giant red tyrannosaurus rex and his missing link ape-like friend Moon-Boy.
Devil Dinosaur was the sort of weird, one-off experiment that Marvel could have easily left alone, but other writers had an affinity for this Kirby creation and couldn’t help but include it in their own stories. The first to do so were Doug Moench and Herb Trimpe on the surprisingly strong licensed Godzilla series in 1979. Aside from keeping Devil Dinosaur’s story alive, Moench and Trimpe retconned him to be a part of Earth’s own history – though Marvel would continue to waffle on that for decades to come.
In those decades, Devil Dinosaur became a go-to “shocking splash page” reveal, but saw his first substantial use over a decade later in New Mutants spin-off Fallen Angels, which pulled him (along with Moon-Boy) into the present day Marvel Universe, where they would remain through Secret Wars in 2015.
In the wake of Secret Wars, Marvel used Devil Dinosaur for another major surprise – they were bringing him back in his own series alongside a brand new character in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.
This new series seemed like it came from out of the blue, but it represented a combination of three prominent market factors for Marvel. First, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur created a new, young, black female superhero in Lunella Lafayette for Marvel to compile into graphic novels and sell outside of the Direct Market, an area where they had seen much success with Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl. Second, it helped them widen the scope of their Inhumans line and the overall arc of their story. Finally, it helped keep old intellectual property alive with the return of a certain red dinosaur!