What I Bought 5/9/2015 - Part 3

Allergies are a terrible thing.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #4 and 5, by Ryan North (writer), Erica Henderson (artist, color artist on #5), Chris Giarrusso (trading card artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) – Maybe I should have wanted Squirrel Girl as a playable character in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 instead of Rocket.

Squirrel Girl defeats Galactus! You need more than that? Fine, she tries punching his foot, when that proves ineffective, she tries confusing him with discussion of linguistics, then friendship. When all that fails, she uses his computer to find a world populated with nothing but acorns, and convinces him to go eat the world instead. Hunger sated, Galactus leaves, after giving Squirrel Girl a present. She returns to Earth, only misses half of her class, and learns her roommate Nancy has already figured out she’s Squirrel Girl. Issue 5 involves Nancy being trapped inside the Statue of Liberty with some other civilians while Squirrel Girl and various other heroes fight the cast of Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics (I think, I’ve never read it, but I know it has a green T-Rex, and there’s one of those here, sooooooo). As it turns out, all of these people believe they have heard of Squirrel Girl, but they all have bizarre conceptions of her. 1940s patriotic hero, Frank Miller’s Batman, MacFarlane’s Spider-Man, teller of horrible jokes about nuts. OK, that one’s accurate.

And there’s one kid who knows all about her from the Internet, who has to be young Dan Slott, because his story about Squirrel Girl traveling her from the future to save the world from an army of 1 Million Doombots, by enlisting the assistance of Squirrel Girls from other realities, sounds an awful lot like Spider-Verse. Except better, because Doombots are a much better enemy than Morlun and his stupid family could hope to be.

Of the two, I much preferred issue 4, since there felt like there was more of a story. I suppose it’s kind of clever they took the old storytelling trope of having different people describe their versions of the character, and turned it on its head. Normally, the different versions are accurate to a certain extent. When the kids did it in that episode of Batman, they used versions of Batman that had existed previously (‘50s giant prop warehouse Batman, Dark Knight Returns, etc.) In this case, none of these versions of Squirrel Girl have existed. Still, I didn’t find most of them particularly funny, Brainwashed Captain America’s “Totalitarianism is Totalitarily Great!” shirt aside.

The Galactus issue had a lot I enjoyed. Squirrel Girl’s, ‘We’re here to kick butts and eat nuts, and you can’t eat nuts in space, ‘ and Galactus’ rejoinder a couple pages later: ‘I did not come here to discuss linguistics, I came here to kick butts and feed on life energy. And I can do both whenever I want. Because I’m Galactus.’ Galactus mocking Squirrel Girl’s attempts to beat him up, the two of them laughing about her beating Thanos (and it wasn’t a clone, robot, or simulacrum, so take that, Jim Starlin!) Tippy complimenting Galactus on his plan to attack Earth without sending a herald to warn everyone. I mean, you could argue Galactus is supposed to be this godlike force mortals can barely comprehend, but I think that went out the window with the number of times writers have him whine about how he’s only doing what he must, and how he understands what it is like to be mortal, and he can still feel, and blah, blah, blah. You know, if I’m about to have a hamburger, I don’t go up to the cow and tell it all about how bad I have it.

I’m not sure where Squirrel Girl got her space suit, and I’m also not sure how she fit the ‘50s style bubble helmet inside her Iron Man armor (although I guess if it could accommodate her tail, a helmet is no big deal), but it a snazzy outfit. I’m not much of a fan of green, but it works surprisingly well on a character that doesn’t normally wear it. Also, she has her little fake ears sitting on the helmet, which is a nice touch. The full page splash of her, Tippy, and Galactus looking at the Earth was nice. It provides a pause that the reader can draw out as long as they like, to enforce the idea the trio has bonded. Which makes Galactus’ decision to go ahead and eat Earth half a page later a nice turn of events. It’s effective comic timing. They’re almost entirely in black, with just a few lines of color on Galactus to suggest his shape and outfit. I would imagine a fair share of the credit for that goes to Rico Renzi, so excellent work. Also, Nancy’s illustration of Doreen in the squirrel suit, beating up the bank robbers, was pretty great. I mean other than Tippy, you can tell she’s covered in squirrels, but that’s OK. I expected the robbers would look more distraught, perhaps they would have dialogue where they lament their poor career choice, or apologize for keeping innocent people from getting falafels.