Lucas Blogs About The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 9

More Squirrel Girl?

More Squirrel Girl!

All right, let's get this over with.

You know, if you stopped treating these comic reviews as a chore they'd stop being one.

You're not this obnoxiously chipper IRL, are you?

Definitely not, but that upbeat attitude is what I love about this comic, as I have previously mentioned. But let's jump right in. Volume 9: Squirrels Fall Like Dominoes, more so than any previous volume of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, exemplifies the ethos of it's indefatigably optimistic hero. This volume finds Doreen Green (the aforementioned Squirrel Girl) worried about her new friend Sergei Kravinoff (better known as Kraven the Hunter). So along with her friends Nancy Whitehead (Doreen's roommate), Tomas Lara-Perez (Chipmunk Hunk), Ken Shiga (Koi Boi), Brian Drayne (Brain Drain), and Mary (Tomas's girlfriend), she invites him to go to an escape room. Little do they know that Jomo, the proprietor, is actually Mojo II — an obscure 90s supervillain whose backstory isn't really worth going into here. That's not what this story is really about.

Then why are you wasting our time with the setup?

It's my blog. Anyway, what the volume is really about is what happens after Squirrel Girl, et al. have defeated all of Mojo II's traps and called the police to apprehend him. See, as a reformed supervillain himself, Kraven actually has six warrants out for his arrest. Squirrel Girl attempts to intervene to prevent a confrontation and — as anyone who's ever encountered a story before can predict — all of our heroes find themselves awaiting trial for resisting arrest (and also for Kraven's many crimes). Now, as I may have mentioned in a previous Squirrel Girl review, Doreen's most impressive powers are empathy and respect.

Gross.

Oh, grow up, Hypothetical Reader. Anyway, Doreen may eat nuts and kick butts, but she also believes that nobody wants to be a criminal and is just as likely to try and find common ground with her adversaries. Doreen and Kraven go way back to the first Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1 (one of only two Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1's) where she convinces him to find a new purpose in life and forswear hunting the most dangerous game: Spider-Man. So it does ring a little false when she is unaware of the extent of Kraven's previous crimes. What doesn't ring false, however, are the conversations the characters have about the possibility of becoming a better person. In particular, Brain Drain, a human brain in a robotic body with a penchant for nihilist and existentialist philosophy, gives a moving speech about his own search for meaning.

That sounds kinda boring.

I just can't win with you, can I? Wanna talk about the art? This volume features a new artist.

Okay. How's the art?

Derek Charm, the new artist, does a good job of making all the returning characters recognizable while having a distinct aesthetic from the original artist, Erica Henderson. The style is still somewhat cartoon-y, but honestly a little generic. And I don't want to sound like I'm bashing Mr Charm or his work, because it is good, I just miss Henderson's artwork. The colorist is still Rico Renzi, so there is some continuity with the previous style.

Gotcha!

However, I will say that Charm is an excellent visual story-teller, a talent he gets to showcase in the volume's final issue, a stand-alone in which the ghost of a librarian renders everyone in New York City mute.

Oh, that does sound fun.

That's what I keep telling you, this is a fun comic book. If you like things that are fun, you should read it.

Fine, jeez, I'll get off your case about it.

Good because I just picked up volume 10!

AUGH!

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, vol. 9 - Squirrels Fall Like Dominoes by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), and Rico Renzi (colorist), Marvel trade paperback edition, 2018, 128 pages, pairs well with nut-themed treats and deep contemplation of the self

Links:

If you need an Erica Henderson fix, I understand that she's the artist on a new (like only a few issues in) called Assassin Nation with writer Kyle Starks.