Rating: 5 stars
Meet Doreen Green, aka Squirrel Girl. She's been living in the attic of the Avengers headquarters, but now she's ready to go to move out and go to college. Accompanied by her trusty squirrel sidekick, Tippy-toe, aka Tippy, she's ready for the challenges of higher education and keeping her super-identity secret. Her new roommate Nancy Whitehead seems mostly interested in knitting and her kitten Mew. Even before she's had time to get properly settled, Doreen has to save the campus from Kraven the Hunter, and shortly after, she's alerted by her squirrel friends that Galactus is on his way towards Earth, and she has less than two hours to stop him. Luckily, by borrowing some Iron Man suit parts from her old pal Tony Stark (who doesn't seem all that happy about it) she manages to make herself a suit. Now she just needs to make Whiplash go away and persuade Galactus that he needs to take his business elsewhere. Doreen's biggest challenge at college so far, though? Talking to cute boys.
Before reading this, I vaguely knew that there was a superhero in the Marvel Universe by the name of Squirrel Girl. As mentioned in my review for Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, my husband is a much bigger classics comics fan than I am, be it Marvel or DC and he's a huge fan of the many creations of Steve Ditko. I think I'd seen pictures of the famous panel where Squirrel Girl defeats supervillain Doctor Doom by having him overrun with her squirrels, but until I read the bonus issue included at the end of this collection, I'd never really experienced the awesome confidence of this rather off-beat superheroine. The modern reinterpretations of Doreen and her squirrels is much more to my liking, but it was fun to see her "origin story", so to speak.
Seriously, this comic was utterly delightful from beginning to end. Doreen's theme-song (which heavily borrows from the Spider-Man theme), her secret powers, the running meta-commentary at the bottom of each page, the fact that Doreen's roommate loves cats and knitting (and has a gift for snark), the letters pages (which I normally like something that should just be skipped), the writing, the excellent art - I am completely won over and adore this comic. I think I love The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl more than Ms Marvel, and that's a pretty impressive feat after just one volume. My Christmas wish list this year will absolutely be featuring more of Doreen's books, because in this super bleak world we're currently in, I need all the colourful, funny and happy comics I can get. Highly recommended!
Oh yeah, I finally completed my double Cannonball! Honesty forces me to admit I finished this comic more than a month ago, I just seem to have lost the ability to make myself to do anything other than binge watch Parks and Recreation or constantly update my Twitter feed, it seems.
Judging a book by its cover: Erica Henderson's art is SO good throughout this comic, and the cover shows you a little tast of that. I adore that Doreen, aka Squirrel Girl isn't built like an emaciated supermodel, but looks like an actual person and is cutely quirky at that. Having Doreen and Tippy on the cover, with Doreen dreaming of all the adoration she'll recieve from her fellow superheroes seems extremely fitting, she's certainly extremely awesome and deserves wide-spread fame and praise.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
No comments:
Post a Comment