Monday, April 27, 2015

Comic Review: Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #4

Squirrel Girl is one of Marvel's stranger characters, both in powers and abilities and in her meta-history of retcons and general comic strangeness. For that reason, this series being written by Ryan North is very fitting, since he is both the creator of Dinosaur Comics and writer for the Adventure Time comics, the first of which has had over 2800 comic strips that all use the same art every time, and the second is, well, Adventure Time. That strange energy he has fits Squirrel Girl perfectly and has served this series well so far.


What I find most interesting here is that Galactus fits perfectly with the world in Squirrel Girl, having the same irreverence in everything that Doreen and every other character has. I am not going to say that Galactus should not act like this, since if he did not, it would feel completely out of place, but it feels a little like everything is the same. Galactus sounds like Ryan North, not just dialogue written by him, as does every other character. It's not been bad enough for me to be tired of it, but the fact that everyone has the same voice and sense of humor has to reach its limit at some point, and I'm afraid of the series reaching the point that it's worn too thin.

Given his track record, I'm not surprised how this issue starts off with a joke, which I almost had to give an award for audacity. He starts with the end of the story, and then goes straight to the letters page. This sets the tone perfectly, but I wish he'd taken the joke farther, being no stranger to seeing how long a joke can go and still be funny. It also plays well knowing Squirrel Girl, who of course is going to defeat Galactus, so why not open it up with him defeated? Then we backtrack into how exactly that went down. 

Regardless of that small, pre-emptive worrying, this series is still going on strong, and I'm going to keep reading it. Any fears of its demise are for the future to worry about, if it ever manages to lose its sense of fun. 

1 comment:

  1. I've been meaning to get into Squirrel Girl. I've heard good things.

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