What I Bought 3/24/2015 - Part 9

It's not coming out next year, but I find myself excited about the Deadpool movie. Of course, it's that nervous excited, the version that is, "Oh, I hope this doesn't suck! But it could suck! But hopefully not!" At least Ryan Reynolds seems excited to be in it. No guarantee of quality, but you'd rather the people involved wanted to be there, right? And if it does well, maybe the star of today's books can show up in a sequel!

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #2 and 3, by Ryan North (words), Erica Henderson (art), Kyle Starks (trading card art, #3), Rico Renzi (color art), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - Squirrel Girl surfing on Iron Man armor is pretty cool as covers go, but I couldn't pass up '50s spaceman style Squirrel Girl defending the scantily-clad native from alien gorillas.

Doreen's trying to attend orientation, so she can join the anime club, and just generally hang out with her roommate and make new friends. But Tippy-Toe shows up to warn her that the squirrels have figured out Galactus is on his way to Earth, and has cloaked his ship from all eyes except those of squirrels. Or maybe some other creatures, but those other creatures aren't alerting any heroes they hang out with, so squirrels it is. Thus, Doreen and Tippy rush to Stark Tower to borrow/steal some armor so they can cut Big G off before he makes it to Earth. But then they get attacked by Whiplash, who is overwhelmed by squirrels, and then some guys have tried to rob the Campus Bank, and Squirrel Girl can't tolerate crime on her campus, so she wears the squirrels as armor and defeats the crooks. By now, Galactus is almost to Earth, so Doreen manages to make him land on the Moon, so she can beat him up there. As one does.

I can generally take or leave the little text jokes at the bottom of each page, but the one on Page 8 of issue 2, about how Tippy-Toe totally expected the glass to shatter dramatically around her when she hit the window? That made me laugh pretty hard. Also, Henderson drew in the sound effect of the impact of Tippy hitting the window in a way I liked, with speed lines emanating from the point of impact overlapping and distorting the "WUMP". And, when Doreen navigates Stark's laser grid, Henderson used the after-image effect! I love the after-image effect, going all the way back to reading Spider-Man comics as a wee bairn. Wait, let me check and make sure I can use "bairn" in that context, and that Claremont hasn't misled me. *checks online* Yep, yep, it means kid, it's cool. Hooray for comics, expanding vocabularies for over 100 years! Not mine, I'm not that old, but people who have read them in general.

There was another funny gag in issue 3 I liked. When Tippy mentioned Galactus will arrive in 2 hours, a counter appears next to her, and reappears in various panels throughout the two issues. At the start of issue 3, we're watching Nancy visit the Campus Bank so she can get money for falafel. Doreen flies by overhead in her Iron Squirrel armor (complete with armor for the tail!), and the counter is visible flying along behind her. I just thought that was funny.

I don't approve of Nancy giving those bank robbers a hard time. I mean, they're trying for some old-fashioned crime, with domino masks and striped prison uniform shirts and everything, and what does she do? Compares them unfavorably to the people who send those scam e-mails about princes in Nigeria or whatever. That is bullcrap. Those crooks are artisans handcrafting the illegal acquisition of money by hand, as have generations of criminals before them. They're incompetent artisans, but still, a little respect. See, now they're going to internalize those hurtful words as come back as grim murder/revenge baddies. They'll wrap razor wire around their arms and be all, "We'll cut you, GRR!" And then they'll flex and slice themselves open in 30 different places and that will be that. But think of the poor janitor who has to clean that up! I hope you're happy, Nancy.

I am torn about Whiplash's fate. On the one hand, a squirrel crawled down his mouth, which is horrifying. On the other hand, he did damage one of Doreen's trading cards, and speaking as someone who has collected trading cards in his time, that is some serious shit right there. So maybe he deserved the horrible taste of live squirrel.