Saturday, February 04, 2023

Saturday Splash Page #58

 
"Technical Knockout," in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (vol. 1) #4, by Ryan North (writer), Erica Henderson (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

In 2015, Marvel gave Ryan North and Erica Henderson the chance to take Squirrel Girl and go nuts.

Audience: Boooooooooo! Boooooooooo!

Shut it, you. Up to that point, Squirrel Girl had mostly been relegated to hanging out with the Great Lakes Avengers, usually written by Dan Slott or Fabian Nicieza. Spinning off the fact she bailed out Iron Man's butt by saving him from Dr. Doom in her first appearance, they started a trend of her defeating big name villains - Thanos, MODOK - when no other heroes were around to see.

So North ran with that, hence "unbeatable." Where most artists since Ditko had drawn Squirrel Girl with a version of the bog standard superheroine body (who may happen to have buck teeth), Henderson gave Doreen a little more bulk in the legs and lower body and a much rounder face. Who happened to have buck teeth and a tail (when she isn't pulling a Warren Worthington and hiding it under her clothes.)

The creative team made Doreen a freshman just starting college as a way to give her a non-superhero supporting cast (although two of the friends she makes turn out to also be animal-themed superheroes) They also made her a computer science major, which North uses to introduce ideas about computers or databases into the stories. Sometimes as immediately relevant, sometimes as an analogy for whatever problem the cast is facing.

My eyes tend to glaze over at some of it, but it's educational (and expositional!) and it made Unbeatable Squirrel Girl a much denser read than most of the comics Marvel or DC were putting out. Especially when added to the fact Doreen often tried to solve problems by talking first, switching to kicking butts only if that fails.

North writes a lot of gags into the stories. Some of them are dialogue-based, in a dry, sort of meta sense. Squirrel Girl expressing surprise Galactus can understand Tippy-Toe's squirrel language and Galactus responding by listing off all the different abilities one who wields the Power Cosmic may possess, ending with, 'So obviously talking to squirrels is really not that big a deal.'

Henderson also gets a lot of chances to draw humor, whether that's Doreen abruptly realizing Ordinary Girl Doreen Girl shouldn't be able to carry a dozen big cardboard boxes herself and just dropping them on the ground, or Doreen and Tippy testing whether each species sees Galactus differently by tossing Tippy way up in the air. So if you ever wanted to see Galactus as a squirrel, issue #4 is the one for you.

Besides the difficulties of starting college and adjusting to her new roommate Nancy Whitehead (and her cat, Mew), and keeping Galactus from eating the Earth, she meets two new superheroes, and then teams up with Thor and the Odinson to stop an evil Asgardian squirrel that's causing trouble on Earth (because Loki's a dick). That story gives us Jane Foster Thor trying to get people to stop fighting over waffles vs. pancakes, only to have one guy pop up yelling his French toast kicks all their butts. It also gives us Loki turning his head into Nancy's fanfic character, Cat Thor. So, again, if that was a thing you needed to see, Erica Henderson had you covered.

And then, after 8 issues, the book got canceled because of Hickman's Secret Wars. Reed and the Illuminati weren't smart enough to ask for Squirrel Girl to deal with their stupid Incursion problem, apparently. Big surprise.

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