A person's curiosity can take them to some interesting places, but when inquisitiveness is paired with the smartest intellect in the Marvel Universe and a dinosaur best friend there's no end to the astounding places you can go. Nine-year-old Lunella Lafayette and her faithful Tyrannosaurus companion, aka Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, are slowly discovering that. The first two arcs of their series had the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe visiting their New York neighborhood, but in the current arc, by writer Brandon Montclare and artist Natacha Bustos, the duo has set out on a cosmic odyssey that's brought them face to face with some of the wonders and terrors of their fantastic reality like a sentient moon named Illa and their evil doppelgangers, Devil Girl and Moon Dinosaur.

CBR spoke with Montclare about the arc, the new characters his protagonists are encountering, the joy of watching Bustos design the subtle differences of a reality similar to our own, and how the heartbreaking climax of “Girl-Moon” will set the stage for the series' Marvel Legacy arc.

CBR: In your last arc, Lunella learned the important lesson that two heads are better than one and that it's okay to ask for help. At the beginning of this story though she and Devil Dinosaur rushed off on a dangerous mission in space to save Illa. It seems Lunella recognizes the value of help, but still has trouble asking for it...

Brandon Montclare: Yes, from a character view point that's exactly how it is. She'll never be perfect. “The Smartest There is,” the arc that just ended, was a way to introduce her to the larger Marvel Universe and bring her to a place where she can be involved with everything. So I think it was important to hit that with issue #18 and show that she's a part of the Marvel Universe, not just an outsider.

RELATED: Montclare & Reeder Explain How “Moon Girl” Became The Smartest Person in the Marvel U

I also wanted to show though that she'll still do something rash and irresponsible. A lot of “Girl-Moon” is about what do you do after you find your place in the world? What does that mean? What we're doing comes out of that.

Also, a lot of the last arc was accomplishing things from a publishing point of view; we wanted Moon Girl to be a big part of everything. Now we have an opportunity to do a story that just focuses on her, Devil Dinosaur, and of course the new characters. I figured as fun as it was to play Lunella off of characters like the Thing and Amadeus Cho, after six issues of a different guest star every month it was nice to do a story that focuses on our title characters and sends them off into outer space!

EXCLUSIVE: Art from Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #22 by Natacha Bustos and colorist Tamra Bonvillain

This personality quirk where asking for help is hard seems to be a common problem for a lot of the Marvel Universe's geniuses. Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and Victor Von Doom have all struggled with knowing when to ask for help in the past. In fact, the only other Marvel genius that I can think of that is really into collaborative science is the Wasp, Nadia Pym.

[Laughs] It's funny -- some of that is because it's publishing and everyone is doing their own books and you don't want to have a crossover every issue. To deal with that from a personality point of view though is interesting.

Not that I want to speak for Jeremy Whitley's great book, but Nadia is, “Let's form a coalition! Let's get everybody together.” It's in her nature. It's a struggle for Lunella though because she doesn't get along well with other people. She's always been on her own. She has learned to come out of her shell, but now that she has she's coming at things from another angle. She sees this current problem is important and she can't just leave it alone.

The current problem Lunella rushed into space to tackle is the predicament of Illa, the girl moon daughter of Ego the Living Planet -- a new character created by you and Natacha Bustos. What inspired her creation?

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Introducing Devil Girl, Moon Dinosaur & Ego, the Living Planet's Daughter

This arc was originally going to just be a filler issue. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 was coming out, and Ego was going to be in it and that looked kind of cool. Plus, I just liked the simplicity of inverting our title. It was going to be this whimsical story and became an entire arc because everyone like it so much.

While Moon Girl is off on this mission, her Doombot head is helping to cover her absence via his manipulation of what appears to be a bunch of “Moonbots.” What kind of role will he play in this arc and the series moving forward

[Laughs] He's in the sub-story of this arc, and he'll be sticking around for as long as we do issues because I think he's fun. In the last arc I wanted to have a scene where Doctor Doom got his head cut off because I thought it would be funny and if it was a Doombot it’s something we could do in all-ages book. Then I just wanted him to stick around. [Laughs]

EXCLUSIVE: Art from Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #22 by Natacha Bustos and colorist Tamra Bonvillain

Natacha has started putting him in different places in the background of Lunella's lab. First he's on a stop sign. Then he's on a video game. So he's very funny, but he's also a counterpart in that in a lot of ways he's the old Lunella; somebody who's detached and robotic, in his case both figuratively and literally. So as much as he's fun and different he's kind of the same, and he'll be a good foil for her.

There's going to be some trouble back home with Doomhead and the Moonbots. It should be a fun story.

In issue #19, Lunella tried to return home, but the Omni-Wave Projector powering her ship sent her and Devil to an alternate reality where they're facing their mirror images, Devil Girl and Moon Dinosaur. What can you tell us about these characters?

So much of the “Girl-Moon” arc comes out of characters like Venom or Man-Bat and Reverse-Flash. We wanted to do these cool opposite characters in an opposite world story. They were fun characters to do, and Natacha had fun drawing them.

It was just fun to have an evil doppelganger issue and it fit with the whole “Girl-Moon” theme, of now that Lunella has found her place she's coming to understand what the roles of other people around her should be. The way that unfolds will effect Illa the Girl-Moon, Doomhead at home, Devil Dinosaur, and a bunch of other characters and things as well.

I knew if I put Devil Dinosaur in a space suit, it was going to be awesome and Natacha is going to have fun doing that. So far Lunella has been in the city. So to put her in this alien environment with these rocks, and all the colors was great. Tamra Bonvillain has done such a great job with the alien colors and the space colors. This story gave us a chance to do something really different. It was something exciting and really fun that I wanted to see my collaborators do.

What can you tell us about the remaining chapters of the “Girl-Moon” arc?

EXCLUSIVE: Art from Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #22 by Natacha Bustos and colorist Tamra Bonvillain

Ilya's dad is going to come and see what's up, so you'll get some scenes with Ego. Beyond that, I don't want to tease too much except for the fact that there's going to be a big status quo change at the end of this arc. The intention with that is to make people a littler heartbroken and cry. So we'll see what happens.

This is an important arc, but one of the things that I'm most excited about is we're doing more and more. “Girl-Moon” ends with issue #23. There's an epilogue in #24. Our Legacy arc, “Fantastic Three,” starts in issue #25, and I've been working on these other stories all the way up to issue #36.

We've got some really cool stuff coming up as we move into the Legacy era. We'll still have the same tone and still look at different kinds of stories in the Marvel Universe, but there will be some interesting things to play with. We're very grateful for Marvel's investment in Moon Girl not just by asking for more issues, but also for making her such a big part of their larger world.

It's amazing the legs we've gotten out of what originally began as, “Hey do you guys want to do something with Devil Dinosaur? But in the present with a Moongirl?” In this day and age you never know how long things are going to last. It's like, “It will be cool to do an arc.” This has been going on so long though, and now she's appearing in other books along with everything else. This book is as far as I've ever worked ahead on any book. So it's pretty cool.