In this review of The Moon Is Following Us #9, the penultimate issue, Sam goes into full-on Mama Bear mode, as the creators give us one hell of a climax.
The Moon Is Following Us #9
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: May 7, 2025
This review contains spoilers
The Moon Is Following Us #9 picks up right where #8 left off: in the fortress, Sam being the only one still standing against Tash and Pigface. Tash tells her that it’s okay to just give up, since she’s basically alone now after Duncan was impaled. But she instead receives a hand from a surprising source: Lucythree. Yes, she’s reduced to her head and its attached hand, but that’s more than enough to encourage Sam to weaponize her (and get a bit of revenge on Tash).
Tash begs Sam to stop. Not only does she not stop, but she ends up dual-wielding the Lucythree flail and the Shark-Head-On-A-Stick. She ends up fighting both Tash and Father Cascade until the rest of the Nightmares arrive. Tash loses a hand, Sam manages to grab Penny. However, Father Cascade ramps up the attacks, and Emirp is lost. Swano urges Sam to get Penny out of there while his forces hold Father Cascade off, with the assurance that “Nightmares never really die”.
Sam gets onto the Pennycorn with Penny, with it taking a moment to pick Duncan up, and flies off to find their way back to the real world. They get close to making it out of there, reaching the bridge, when they’re blown out of the sky.
Father Cascade has caught up, ready to finish this. He unmasks, revealing the blinding, burning light beneath it. He tells Sam that she made a good effort…but it’s time. She’s shielding Penny with her body, even as the light burns into her back, when Duncan reenters the fray, wielding the car seat and shielding his wife and daughter. He tells FC that they should be able to leave, and he’ll stay behind…before throwing the shark head at their opponent and letting it chew away at Father Cascade until he explodes into a mess of parts and light.
As soon as Father Cascade is gone, Penny wakes up. Sam is overjoyed, but Duncan’s not quite able to feel that same joy. He can’t go back with his girls, and he knows this. He gives one last apology before he burns away right in front of their eyes, Sam begging him to stay. In the outside world, Pigface and Tash confirm his death.
The Moon Is Following Us #9 was an emotional one. It was already fairly clear that Sam wasn’t just going to give up on retrieving her kid without a fight…not after she and Duncan had gone through so much for this goal already. She now has to fight for both of them, which adds a nice element to her dual-wielding against her opponents. That grief from losing her husband, mixed with the determination to not also lose her daughter is fueling her in this battle. Even if she is outmatched, she proves to be a force to be reckoned with.
The Moon Is Following Us #9 also got me thinking a bit about how death works in this dream reality. Lucythree’s shown to not be fully intact anymore…but she’s also not what one would call dead, since she explicitly offers her help to Sam in the fight. Which, in light of Swano telling Sam that you can’t truly kill a Nightmare, tracks pretty well (since Lucythree was part of the Nightmare forces).
Duncan had been run through in the previous issue, but is still able to rally enough to finish off Father Cascade. I wonder if some form of him will continue on in Penny’s dreams after all is said and done. Given that he’d been there from the real world as opposed to being a denizen of the dream one, the rules are probably different in his case.
I’m also wondering just how the landscape and everything about Penny’s Dream World will change after all of this, since she’s now got the “just lost my dad” trauma to contend with. Even if there is somehow a way to revive him, it’s an image that gets burned into one’s memory. That’s not even counting the living versions of her toys that’d fallen (provided she was aware that they had life in her dreams). She might not have witnessed any of the battles while she was asleep, but processing what she did end up seeing may be a bit of a mess.
Art-wise, The Moon Is Following Us #9 delivered some glorious compositions with the action scenes. The posing was beautifully dynamic, and between the art and writing, the whole issue was an adrenaline rush from start to finish. With one issue left, there are still a few threads to pick up on (Pigface and Tash are still out there, Sam and Penny aren’t yet back in the real world..), and there’s still the denouement portion to get to.
Final Thoughts
Excitement, joy, tears…you’ll find all of the above in The Moon Is Following Us #9. The rest of the series was already great, but this is what it’s all led up to.
