And Did I Mention That I Have A Dinosaur?
Antiblackness and Ableism through Lunella Lafayette
This essay is a spiritual sequel to my argument about how Daredevil promotes disabled sexuality as a positive, but this one is NOT NSFW (and thank God for that). However, it is still rooted in my experience with disability studies’ course material. As before, I’m not doing in-text citations, especially because the main source for all of this is me, myself, and I. But, like always, I’m happy to provide more resources if asked.
The Internet tells me that a lot of people just don’t understand intersectionality. Let me set the scene. You’re scrolling on Twitter when you stumble upon yet another intracommunity argument. One person mentions how they experience transphobia from cis disabled people and ableism from able-bodied trans people. Another person says they’re just playing Oppression Olympics. Swap out the different compounding modes of oppression as best suits your imagination. Rinse and repeat.
What the second person in this sadly too common hypothetical is missing is how intersectionality works. It’s a framework for understanding how different types of oppression work together or are worsened because of each other. It allows us to discuss nuances of discrimination and examine where some people might be privileged in one environment and not in another. It’s also notably a framework made specifically to help discuss the treatment of Black women, who are often erased from white conceptions of feminism.
Okay, jargon over. Just keep this all in mind when we talk about Lunella because she has everything to do with this.
Unlike the one and only Matthew Murdock, I don’t actually remember when I first learned about Lunella Lafayette. My early foray into comics is so blurred that I can’t recall meeting her. I just know that by October 2021, I was exploring (sadly OOC) ideas with her. I still envision Lunella as Haitian-American because hello? Lunella Louise Lafayette? Si li pa ayisyen, mwen se yon chen. But, more importantly, she spoke to me outside of that shared imagined connection.
As a very young child, I taught myself how to read, a fact that my mom still brags about to this day. I’m a speed reader, and I’ve always been good at memorization. I even skipped a grade, which is why I was always the youngest person in my grade. Gifted programs are still alive and well where I grew up in Miami, and my parents being teachers ensured that they got me tested by a colleague for inclusion in one. I don’t really always agree with the rhetoric that they’re inherently harmful programs; honestly, the racism and bullying I experienced in it was completely separate from all that baggage. But the point stands that I was a very lonely disabled child with no medication, no support, and barely any friends. Seeing Lunella is like seeing an alternate version of myself, the version of me that actually got powers and could advocate for herself.
“Wait. Lunella has powers?” Sort of! Yeah, listen up, MGADD. I love you, I do. I haven’t finished watching you, but I still adore you. It’s because of that adoration that I gently tell you this now: LUNELLA’S SUPERPOWER IS NOT JUST HER FUCKING BRAIN. Intelligence is a finicky thing and so very often rooted in eugenics, but there are Black girl geniuses out there. Yes, what Lunella’s capable of is exaggerated for the sake of fiction, but still, she’s got more going on. Lunella’s Inhuman, and that matters because how it presents mirrors the autistic Black girl experience.
The Fuck is an Inhuman?
I am about to summarize a lot of lore that I do not fully understand and also do not care about too much, so bear with me.
The Kree are a group of aliens who have created an empire due to their militaristic motivations. At some point in their history, they decided to genetically modify humans due to their ‘latent potential’. While the project was eventually abandoned, the Inhumans remained. It was originally believed that all Inhumans resided in one location, but then came the Terrigen Bomb. Exposure to Terrigen mists can induce Terrigenesis. Essentially, a person with Inhuman lineage may produce a cocoon around themselves and either emerge with powers/mutations or die. I have glossed over a lot, including even more eugenics in terms of who is allowed to undergo this process. Either way, what matters is Lunella has that heritage, gets exposed to the mists, and transforms.
The description for the comic even goes so far as to say that Lunella is ‘fearful of the monstrous Inhuman genes inside her’. Obviously though, there’d be no story if she wasn’t exposed. Her power isn’t even that beneficial to her. She can transfer consciousnesses between herself and Devil Dinosaur, who is a dinosaur. This often happens when she wants it the least. It’s not overly problematic for such a young girl to suddenly be in a hulking dinosaur body. Like we’ve established, Lunella is incredibly smart and does nothing to provoke people. The problem is that a dinosaur is in her body now, and Devil is an animal.
The Plight of the Black Disabled Girl
In a recently released graphic novel about Lois Lane being Japanese-American, her ex-best friend asserts that it’s impossible to transcend racism. I think Lunella is the perfect character to illustrate this.
It doesn’t matter how smart Lunella is because she’s Black. I’ve been in her position, so I know what I’m talking about. Your grades and insights are all well and good when you’re benefiting the school, but the instant you showcase anything that proves you’re not the Good One, you’re worthless. Welcome disability to the floor now, everyone. For me, my undiagnosed ADHD and autism got me paradoxically labeled as a star pupil and a problem student. I was more often tolerated because of my mother than liked for anything I brought to the table. Teachers didn’t care that I was extremely socially isolated. Showcasing my neurodivergence equaled an excuse for humiliation hour.
For Lunella though, her situation is more fraught. I was an argumentative kid at times, but I was rarely physically disruptive. DD-nella (Devil Dinosaur in Lunella’s body) is. He growls. He climbs on tables. He steals food. He breaks shit. These aren’t behaviors in isolation. Let’s reframe the situation really quick. A Black student gets angry at a classmate. All of a sudden, she’s nonverbal and physically aggressive. She tries to bite her classmate. She breaks a school project. When you try to talk her out of the meltdown, she hisses at you. Her recent miniseries painfully illustrates the consequences of what happens when a racist witnesses the results of her power.
Lunella can’t transcend racism. Her being the smartest person in the entire world doesn’t matter. She will always be subjected to antiblackness, and that antiblackness is additionally influenced by ableism. Is Lunella autistic textually? Not as far as I’ve seen. Subtextually though? Absolutely. I will not be using labels that refer to the level of ‘functioning’ we have because I feel those are often demeaning and used by allistics too liberally. What I will say is Lunella’s case showcases acceptability. When her subtextual autism solely isolates her socially, it’s fine. Her not having friends isn’t a problem. Her ‘acting like’ a dinosaur is.
The thing about Lunella though is that she is able to advocate for herself in a way a lot of other Black disabled girls in her position cannot. Her parents mean well, but they approach her situation with paternalism. Here, their professions matter. Her mother in the comics is a counselor at a maximum security prison, and her father works in a disease unit for a hospital. The legal and medical spheres often approach disability under a paternalistic view. Although there is a stated (and often even believed) investment in the care of a disabled person, this care results in the loss of autonomy. For many, they are sadly not able to argue against this treatment effectively, or at all. Lunella can. And she does.
The comic does not come up with a concrete answer, but I don’t think it really needs to. Adria and James are doing their best to raise their daughter. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur argues that this isn’t always enough, but that it’s okay as well to not immediately have the answers for how to improve. Perhaps in another comic an attempt can be made.
To end off, I both like Lunella’s new roller derby friends and giggle at their group name.
Introducing the Support Alliance Derby for Sensationably Abled Kids, or SAD SAKS! We discuss the power of terminology a lot in disability studies. Labels like differently abled or special needs are just a few examples of the words people use in different walks of life to refer to disabled people, especially children. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised then how Lunella’s story has become such a powerful Black disabled experience allegory, especially when the kids also grapple with visibility as disabled- Inhumans. I mean, as Inhuman children. Naturally.
I don’t know, Will. Normalcy is a constantly shifting societal construct. It’s a bit overrated.
Anyway, if this essay has inspired anything, I hope more people will consider how to thoughtfully think about (and create!) intersectional stories in comics, from the obvious to the not-so-realistic. We deserve it. We belong here.