Black Girl Magic: Envisioning Black Feminism in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

In his book Super Black: American Pop Culture Adilifu Nama claims that “black superheroes…are not only fantastic representations of our dreams, desire, and idealized projections of ourselves, they are also a symbolic extension of America’s shifting political ethos and racial landscape.” (Nama 2) Luke Cage aka Powerman was Marvel’s first prominent black superhero. With catch phrase “sweet Christmas” he patrolled the streets of Harlem and prevented drug deals and fought organized crime. His large physique and rippling muscles spoke to the potentiality of the black superhero in conversation with emerging trends of Black empowerment.


In 1962 Marvel introduced its second black hero Black Panther to allude to the pan-African movement. African prince and Wakandan UN Ambassador T’Challa allied with the Avengers to fight supervillains and voodoo witch doctors. But what very few people know about Black Panther is, he is married to Storm. Yet again, she becomes background filler, in an otherwise male superhero narrative. While Nama’s argument speaks to questions on representation of black culture, it does not, however, adhere to an audience outside of the male scope.

Misty Knight, Storm, and Iron Heart (Origin framing)

Storm made her Marvel debut in 1963 only two years after Luke Cage and before Black Panther yet her exegesis is that she is an African goddess who aligns herself with the X-Men, though no reasoning is ever clearly defined. We take this alliance on face value. In the decades since Storm’s existence, her wardrobe has evolved to include more layers of actual clothing, but her voluptuous physique does not change. Her body is fetishized with her piercing blue eyes and long white hair and we consume this spectacle of the ideal black body.

Similarly, Misty Knight’s debut in the 70s parallels the emergence of Blaxploitation. A young Pam Grier like black cop karate chops her way into Iron Fist and Luke Cage’s narratives. She is only useful in her ability to deliver solid P.I. work and save prostitutes. While Misty is unique in that she has no super human strength…until she gets a bionic arm…she remains ultimately normal. She too wears skin tight clothes and her presence is largely background noise to that of her male counterparts until the mid 90s.

It would take almost twenty years for this to change until we would have our first independent African American female superhero, and it would come in the form of a sassy and intelligent little girl, as seen in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.

Moon Girl (Synopsis)

Lunella Lafayette is a nine-year-old African American girl from New York. She is considered the smartest human on Earth and, along with her sidekick Tyrannosaurus Rex, she collaborates with many Marvel heroes such as Dr. Strange, Ms. Marvel, the X-Men, and the Incredible Hulk to thwart evil and evildoers such as Dr. Doom. Her catchphrase, “brains over brawns” speaks to the development of a character that privileges

intelligence as a superpower versus acute physical strength commonly associated within the superhero aesthetic. Interestingly, she is also the first black solo female Marvel character with her own original narrative that does not exist within any team framework (e.g. X-Men or Avengers). Anytime the Avengers seek to recruit her, she refuses. She is not fetishized through costuming and she refuses to be in the background. A character like Moon Girl shows that there is potential hope for women of color within the comic cannon. This potentiality allows for reclaiming black feminine agency. Women of color will not be highlighted for their physical or sexual prowess, but rather their intellectual capabilities.

Black Feminism and Moon Girl

In her book Aint I a Woman theorist bell hooks argues that historically Black women have been reduced down to oppressed and sexualized objects. In the advent of the Women’s suffrage movement, she points that the fight for women’s rights aligned with African American civil rights, however, this alignment was largely between white women and black men thus eradicating the inclusion of black woman within this argument of equality. With time, the 1950s sought to create the black matriarch who served as the pillar of strength but was ultimately docile in relation to black men. With First and Second wave feminism “most women involved in the recent move toward a feminist revolution assume that white women have initiated all feminist resistance to male chauvinism in American society and further assumed that black women are not interested in women’s liberation.” The problem with this assumption, as hooks posits is that radical feminism did not engage with notions of how race and class positioned women’s equality across sociological boundaries. As such, Black feminism in the early 1980s sought to re-envision feminism to include a black lens one that positions black women outside of fetishized spectacle and reimagines her intellectual worth.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur works to reposition the black female body. Lunella Layfayette adheres to the call for what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie claims that we should all be feminists. There needs to be a shift thought to include a socio-political perspective with regards for race and gendered experience. In comparing comic studies which largely center on male mythology and characterization therein, a comic like Moon Girl argues that this focus needs to include a black female perspective. As Lunella shows, the idealized notion of the “superhero”—especially black—needs to be re-envisioned to include the potentiality of a female role model. Black girls should have the space to celebrate the beauty, power, and resilience of the black woman.

Womanism, coined by Alice Walker is an attempt to redefine black feminism as and position it rather as  a movement to support all of black community. This theory supports the significance of both black man and woman bearing equal importance. The black woman is not just background noise, but rather supports the black man and her community simultaneously. Moon Girl relies on her close mentorships with women of color like Ms. Marvel (Marvel’s first Middle Eastern superhero) and Iron Heart (Tony Stark’s aka Iron Man’s protégé) for support and guidance. Here, these superheroes are building a community of support within the Marvel Universe. In this, they are showing the potential in which the Marvel cannon could be.

Conclusion

So what is the trajectory of the cannon from here? It’s hard to say. With Black Panther and Luke Cage just now becoming major film productions there is the sense that Marvel is beginning to recognize the need for inclusion of people of color. While this seems to be an optimistic shift, I do have my reservations. As it stands, the black superhero only is heralded for saving black lives. Luke Cage serves as a symbol of a bullet-proof black man, thus instilling hope. Black Panther works to unite Wakanda with the world and save his sovereignty from the creole Killmonger who seeks to redefine this nation with an Americanized twist.  Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is now being made into a TV series and I am excited for it to debut. Perhaps for little girls like me who are told that comics are for white boys they can finally have proof that black girls can be so many things. The are powerful and strong, they are intelligent engineers they are awkward and adolescent, they are beautiful, and they are magic.