Ryan North on Squirrel Girl: “She’s always gonna be laughing with you—not at you.”
The writer of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl—now officially my favorite comic book—talked to Marvel Live about the hilarious and uplifting superhero series.
The video below shows the show floor of New York Comic Con 2018 when Ryan North gave Marvel Live the low-down about what makes Squirrel Girl unbeatable, and told them all about his book How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler.
What led me to the Squirrel Girl comic book
Let me just take a moment here to tell you again about the Squirrel Girl comic that North wrote. Now available in an omnibus edition that presumably collects the whole saga—currently on my to-buy list—I originally never expected to care so much about these stories. But then I read Douglas Wolk’s excellent book All of the Marvels, which explains (and demonstrates) how thousands of Marvel comic books are interconnected into one large story.
In one chapter of that book, Wolk talked through the storylines in The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. We learn of the various ways she interacts with more famous Marvel characters.
“Even as The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl refuses to take anything too seriously, it plays scrupulously by the rules of the Marvel universe’s continuity,” Wolk wrote. “Everything we see happen becomes part of its history.”
And by the time I got to the end of the chapter, what I learned about this Squirrel Girl epic saga made me laugh and then made me cry.
I then started reading collected volumes from the library. When I got to a part of the story where the library had stopped getting the subsequent volumes (seriously?), I knew I have to get that omnibus. In fact, by the time you read this, I’m sure I will have bought it and read the whole thing (all 1,588 pages).
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About The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Omnibus
by Ryan North (Author), Chip Zdarsky (Author), Will Murray (Author), Erica Henderson (Author, Cover Art, Artist), Nilah Magruder (Author), Derek Charm (Artist), Naomi Franquiz (Artist), Joe Quinones (Artist), Siya Oum (Artist)
Kicking butts and eating nuts is all in a day's work for Squirrel Girl—the super hero and computer science student who just can’t be beat! But that won’t stop a long line of villains from trying—including Kraven the Hunter, the Mole Man, Count Nefaria and, would you believe, Galactus?!
It’s a good thing Doreen Green can count on an ever-growing list of friends to help, both in conquering evildoers and her all-important studies—pals like Tippy-Toe (the squirrel), Nancy (the human) and Howard (the duck) and fellow crimefighters Koi Boi, Chipmunk Hunk and Brain Drain! From the Savage Land to outer space, Squirrel Girl travels the length and breadth of the Marvel Universe—and beats it up!
Collects The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2015a) #1-8, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2015b) #1-50, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe, Howard The Duck (2015b) #6 and material from A Year Of Marvels: Unbeatable and Not Brand Echh (2017) #14.
Ryan North talks about Unbeatable Squirrel Girl | Marvel Entertainment
Ryan North is a New York Times bestselling and Eisner-award winning comics creator of Dinosaur Comics, writer of the comic book adaptation of StarTrek: Lower Decks, the co-editor of the Machine of Death series, and the author of both “To Be or Not To Be” and “Romeo and/or Juliet” choose-your-own-path versions of Shakespeare’s plays.
He also wrote The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl for Marvel Comics, where he is now writing their current issues of Fantastic Four. (I’m currently reading the Fantastic Four whole series in order—from 1961’s issue #1 on—but have not reached these issues in Ryan North’s run yet. However, I am very excited about getting to them.)
North’s non-fiction work includes How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveller and the How to Take Over the World.
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