In this review of The Moon Is Following Us”, Penny is officially free, and turns out to be a bright light in the dark. But is this enough to get her and her family home?
The Moon Is Following Us #10
Writer: Daniel Warren Johnson
Artists: Daniel Warren Johnson, Riley Rossmo
Colors: Mike Spicer
Main Cover: Riley Rossmo
Variant Cover: Daniel Warren Johnson
Page Count: 28 pages
Release Date: June 4, 2025
This review contains spoilers
The Moon Is Following Us #10 picks up with Sam and Penny on the bridge. Penny reveals that she’s known about the Cascade having come from her parents’ traumas.
Meanwhile, Duncan’s life force turned out to be enough to bring Tash’s daughter back…but not enough to satisfy Pigface, leading to him devouring Tash outright (right in front of his daughter, to boot). He goes to try and ensure that Sam and Penny stay trapped as well.
During Pigface’s attack, Sam is understandably worried about losing her daughter, but Penny insists that she trust her. She does, and Penny transforms into a superhero, proving to be quite powerful because it’s her dream and therefore has all the real power.
Duncan is trapped in a (literal) dark place, feeling it’s what he deserves. Penny shows up, is having none of that, and leads him back home.
Back in the real world, Duncan wakes up again, the family heads home, and they’ve gained a new member in the form of Tash’s daughter Joanna. But thanks to Pigface sucking a whole bunch of life out of him, Duncan’t left severely weakened, having to use a wheelchair for the rest of his shortened life.
One day, a few years later, Penny gets that call. She visits Duncan in the hospital before he goes, wishing she could save him again. But he assures her that it’ll be okay, and that he’ll never truly leave her.
So, The Moon Is Following Us #10 was a bit of a roller coaster, emotion-wise. There’s that bit of maternal horror at the very prospect of losing a kid (after having spent the previous 9 issues fighting tooth and nail to get her back), that utter burst of joy that comes up when Penny taps into the power of it being her own dream, and then the tears at the end when Duncan fully succumbs to the damage done by Pigface. Between the artwork and the writing, those last couple of pages had quite an emotional impact.
With that final scene, it’s clear that this is what everything had been leading up to. Each of the flashbacks to Penny and her father (particularly that one from a few chapters back, with her saying she could unfreeze him with her powers during a game) gains a particular relevance by the end of the story. One of the final things Duncan tells her before he passes is to look up when she thinks of him, because “I might just be following you”, closing on a shot of her looking up at the moon, crossing the same bridge as when she’d made the observation this very comic is named for as a kid.
There are a few questions raised by the time jump between their return home and the end. For one thing, how long of a jump? Judging by the 2nd to last panel, Penny’s at least old enough to have a kid of her own. But at the same time, it’s established that her father’s life span has been shortened considerably after everything that happened, and Sam hadn’t seemed to have aged much. Furthermore, kind of wondering what things had to be like for the family within this span of time, particularly with them having added another child to their family.
Also, I sort of love that the reaction to them finding this other (undoubtedly confused and somewhat scared) girl upon returning from Penny’s dreams was to adopt her, rather than just deciding: “Well, you can leave with us, but then you’re the state’s problem”. Plus, she was in the same situation as Penny was. It’s outright stated earlier in the series that this scenario is extremely rare, to the point where modern science has no answers. Penny may have turned out to be fairly well-adjusted…but one has to admit, what she went through is a deeply strange experience. So it’s good that she has a new sister that can actually understand how strange it all is.
One thing I’d noticed with the artwork in The Moon Is Following Us #10 was with Penny’s hair. In flashbacks and the real world, it’s shorter, a bit scruffier. But in the dream world, it’s a bit longer and the volume of it reminds me a bit of a blonde version of her mother’s hair. That part really clicked for me when she called herself strong, just like Sam. So in her dreams, that’s a way of her manifesting that aspect of being just like her mom without being an outright copy of her.
Final Thoughts
The Moon Is Following Us #10 is a satisfying ending to an excellent series. All of the triumphs, near misses, and losses have led to this. Some very well-executed callbacks to the prior issues of the series, and some emotional beats make this a fitting conclusion.
