2021 EDIT: Just as good as on the first read. A fantastic, fun, funny, friendly, feminist, flouncy, furry, fuzzy and fabulous Marvel superhero book. What a charmer.
Read my original review for more.
Final Score: 4/5
Original Review:
Oh my gosh, this is so much fun! One of the funniest, most charming and exciting reads of the year.
Squirrel Girl does it again! In her origin story in novel form, written by the wonderful Shannon and Dean Hale. Squirrel power - the unbeatable superheroine of Marvel - and where it all began...
Doreen Green is an adorable, optimistic and full of nutty energy girl of fourteen-years-old, born with a bushy tail and other squirrely attributes like two buck teeth, retractable claws, super agility and strength. And talking to squirrels. She, along with her parents, move into a new town of Shady Oaks in New Jersey, which is a rundown, petty crime-laden location in juxtaposition to her bright nature, with unfriendly and mean kids at her new school.
This set-up leads to Doreen steadily finding her calling, as a superhero she has always thought of herself in her head until now - Squirrel Girl! who saves other squirrels, dogs, babies, juvenile graffiti gang members, and LARPers taking things too far. A sinister plot involving a robotic takeover and specifically testing and challenging Squirrel Girl to boost some bad guy-wannabe's ego is going on, and the realities of being a (very young) hero in the modern internet age in the Marvel Universe soon begin to sink in for the ray of sunshine and ball of furry hugs that is Doreen Green. It is also here where she first meets her beloved squirrel sidekick, Tippy-Toe. Take that, Wolverine and your jacket!
With 'The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World', Marvel once again proves how fun it can be when it just goes along for the ride and doesn't take itself too seriously. The authors of the book play along with writing about a superhero world inhabited by colourful characters and crazy science, and you can tell they were having a blast with the silly material and making it all as charming and accessible as possible. It is an all-ages novel - so nice to see something inclusive for younger audiences for Marvel's superhero properties for a change - so it never gets too dark or mean-spirited (Asgard forbid in a Squirrel Girl story!), and nobody dies in it. Nonetheless it is so entertaining and heartfelt, I had a big smile on my face as I shot through the book in two days.
Doreen's lovable if naive personality is infectious; she is the imaginative child we as adults wish we could be again, living in our own worlds. She listens to and hums loud, upbeat music, and is so hyperactive that rare moments of exhaustion only make her move about even more. Plus she provides hilarious commentary in page footnotes throughout 'Squirrel Meets World', similar to how she would break the fourth wall in the comics; like a teen girl, child-friendly Deadpool. It is her coming-of-age hero's tale (tail, more like; yeah, she makes up funnier word play than me), where she is finding out who she is, and why she does what she does. Can Squirrel Girl be a true superhero? Or a joke, like her initial creation?
And squirrels are awesome little creatures. You learn so much about them on this adventure. Add in babysitting and you get a cute bundle of joy of a book full of robot action, carjacking, compromised dogs, text messages between Squirrel Girl and the Avengers (and Rocket Raccoon), and a talking courgette.
Doreen's parents, Dor and Maureen (get it? Doreen sure does), are as softhearted and scatterbrained as she is. They parent her so sweetly that grounding their kid is a foreign concept to them. They claim that she must hide her squirrel tail in public because people would get jealous of not having a tail themselves. Bless them; they were only trying to protect her from a cruel world where "freak" is still a normal, pejorative term in a world where superpowered humans, aliens and Norse gods exist. Young Doreen believes whatever her parents tell her, until she attempts to become a hero for her new home turf and she can't hide from the harsh reality any longer. But regardless, Maureen and Dor love and support their strange, unique daughter in her choices, unconditionally. They are a cracking, hysterically-funny couple, and surprisingly complex. And so is Squirrel Girl.
The friends she meets and makes aren't limited to the butt-kicking Tippy-Toe and her hundreds of squirrel kin, eating nuts in trees and scouting territories. There is Ana Sofia from school, a lonely deaf girl, also a POC, who is understandably tired of trying to communicate with people and explain her disability over and over again, and is prone to intense glaring. But she's really very sweet, and acts as the detective, computer programmer and hacker Intel person for Squirrel Girl. She loves socks, maths, comic books, and has a crush on Thor (who doesn't?). Ana Sofia would make a great superhero, in fact: it is colossally rare to see a deaf character in anything in the media, much less in a superhero story, and an origin story at that. A three-dimensional dark-skinned female with an honestly-depicted disability. Fantastic representation.
Speaking of which, ethnic minorities and people with dark skin are a constant in 'Squirrel Meets World', and even better, some white people are described as being white when we are introduced to them, negating the white-as-default narrative BS. Doreen has a family in Canada, too!
'Squirrel Meets World' has the makings of a Marvel goldmine. It came so close to getting five stars from me. However, I feel it falls a little flat in terms of its build-up to a battle climax to save Shady Oaks (and the world, possibly. Probably). The final showdown crams in a lot with little page-room for well-rounded development for the many characters, and everything is solved pretty easily. An attempt to sabotage Squirrel Girl's reputation via internet trolling and online abuse felt kind of tacked on for a reason to ensure her breakdown for the beginning of the book's third act (and for her friends to suddenly, seemingly abandon her when she needs them), and it could have been far more explored as commentary. The mystery villain is rather obvious - that this is a kids' book is no excuse - and doesn't get especially interesting until the final battle with the heroine, ironically enough.
Spoiler:
The young computer nerd is a H.Y.D.R.A. experiment leftover. He builds robot parents for himself that, when Squirrel Girl decapitates them, merge together by their necks to become a killer robot spider, with blades for arms and legs. Holy nuts and bolts, what a scary-as-hell image. That is 'Human Centipede' horror right there, for a lighthearted, all-ages book.
Spoiler end.
There's no LBGTQ representation, sadly.
Lastly, why does Doreen think that Iron Man is a mere Avengers' errand boy? Is there a joke here I'm missing? Poor bastard.
Bonus, and this has to be added:
Spoiler:
Thor and Black Widow show up from S.H.I.E.L.D. after Squirrel Girl's win against the bad guy/her "nemesis" in Shady Oak. Thor bonds with Ana Sofia over socks, and he coos a baby as he takes him back to his mother via hammer leap. Not bizarre enough? Black Widow, the snarky stick-in-the-mud, laughs - she seriously laughs at the end of her cameo. How I envy those who might try and succeed at imagining Scarlett Johansson crying in fits of joyous laughter in her tight black leather fetish suit.
Spoiler end.
Just... what a gem. What a charm against cynicism, hate, and the gritty and edgy age of superheroes 'The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World' is. Sweet, sensitive, ridiculously funny and cute, it is like a sugar rush: a colourful, action-packed Saturday morning cartoon expertly implemented for the novel medium. Think 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' and 'The Lego Batman Movie'. And there is no romance! It says something when the recent books that I've read and loved have no romances in them.
I enjoyed Squirrel Girl and friends immensely. Maybe I'll forgive Marvel, and lift my boycott, at least a little. I crave superheroines and comics too much.
Final Score: 4/5
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