Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Squirrel Girl

The Definitive Squirrel Girl Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The Squirrel Girl comic books issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics.  Last updated November 2018 with titles scheduled for release through March 2019.

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New to Squirrel Girl? Here’s where to start!

Check out Vol. 1: Squirrel Power and Vol. 2: Squirrel You Know It’s True, a pair of paperbacks that collect Squirrel Girl’s entire 2010 series PLUS her debut from 1990. You don’t need any special Marvel knowledge to start there. You can get both of those volumes in a single hardcover with Deluxe Edition, Vol. 1.

If you like what you read (or already love Doreen Green), keep reading to learn more.

[Patreon-2017][/Patreon-2017]

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A Brief History of Squirrel Girl Comic Books

Could writer Will Murray and venerable artist Steve Ditko have ever dreamed that when created a silly, one-off ally for Iron Man in a nearly-shelved story in 1991 they were creating a hero that wo

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uld capture the hearts of so many fans over 25 years later?

Probably not, given that Squirrel Girl did not make another appearance for 14 years after her ignominious debut! Plus, she was a girl with the claw, tail, proportional strength, and reflexes of a squirrel – not exactly A-list material, even when you add her ability to understand the critters. In other words: a one-off joke.

She finally resurfaced in 2005 as part of the pun-filled Great Lakes Avengers (GLA), which were part of future Spider-Man writer Dan Slott’s journey from YA funny books to Marvel’s signature wallcrawler.

Slott continued to dote on Squirrel Girl for a few years, but what cracked this nut wide open cause was Deadpool.

Fabian Nicieza was writing Cable & Deadpool in 2006, and in the fateful issue #30 Deadpool first crossed paths with Squirrel Girl and the GLA during Marvel’s Civil War event.

Okay, it wasn’t actually that momentous occasion. However, Deadpool is a major seller for Marvel and his fans love many silly, punny things. Squirrel Girl fit right in, which brought her much wider notice than she had under Slott’s pen. The two writers then teamed up for Deadpool / GLI: Summer Fun Spectacular, while Slott twice slipped her into his Avengers: The Initiative.

Finally, in 2010, Squirrel Girl hit the big time – Brian Bendis added her as a supporting character to one of a pair of Avengers flagship titles – New Avengers. No longer at the comedic fringe of the Marvel Universe, now she appeared in the supporting cast of Marvel’s top-selling books.

And then, she finally… disappeared completely. Seriously, after Bendis’s use of her, she up and dropped out of comics for three years. It seemed like she was about to fade back into obscurity, but after the success of 2014’s Ms. Marvel, Marvel was seeking more quirky, female-lead books to bring to market.

That’s how we wound up with Dinosaur Comics author Ryan North and illustrator Erica Henderson on the uproariously fun-for-all-ages Unbeatable Squirrel Girl in 2015

Suddenly, Squirrel Girl was in her own top-selling comic book! It just took 25 years to get there. And, in all honesty, you don’t have to read any of those 25 years of comics to enjoy this series. North and Henderson give you all of the information you need to know to enjoy their book in nearly every issue. The launch of the book itself was a fresh start for Squirrel Girl – it only glancingly references her past stories.

Thanks to her newfound popularity, Squirrel Girl’s profile in Marvel was a bit higher in 2016. Now, rather than be a supporting member in an Avengers book, she was a star in a new volume of New Avengers. Plus, she made more guest-starring appearances than ever.

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Why female comic characters matter (to a baby)

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If we were to look at the pie chart of activities of my life (which would still be a terrible use of a pie chart because even when looking at proportional representation out of 100% it’s harder to compare the relative sizes of things in that format – death to pie charts) it would be obvious that comic book reading takes up a not-insignificant amount of my time.

If we are in a room with this comic book EV needs to run to it and bring it back to me to page through. Spidey who is a girl AND is in a rock band? Is there any better thing in the multi-verse?

If we are in a room with this comic book EV needs to run to it and bring it back to me to page through. Spidey who is a girl AND is in a rock band? Is there any better thing in the multi-verse?

That meant that EV had a lot of comic books read to her from as soon as she could be propped up to semi-sit-up on her own. Yet, even when she didn’t even have the means to escape from my reading, her attention span wouldn’t necessarily last an entire issue, let alone a whole trade paperback. That changed quite suddenly when I read her Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Avengers Assemble: The Forgeries of Jealousy last summer, a story primarily staring Spider-Girl at its center. EV sat transfixed by the whole thing. She let me read the entire book to her multiple times in one sitting.

I didn’t think too much of it – I just love reading DeConnick’s dialog, so maybe that did the trick, which also explained EV staying put in the fall for Captain Marvel, Volume 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More. The realization didn’t hit me until I read her the critically acclaimed, newly-Hugo-winning Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1 (and to E, who lingered in the room, feigning not paying attention but actually listening quite closely).

That baby would sit still to read books with female heroines.

I tested my theory. Spider-Man? A few pages. Hulk? No interest. Thor? Barely a glance. Storm? Entire issues. The lady version of Thor? Glued to the pages. Spider-Gwen? She picks it up every time we walk up to the attic. Hell, one of her first few dozens words was “Lumberjanes” so she could request the comic of the same name (which I dislike; maybe more on that later).

Tonight we read the first few issues of Ryan North’s delightful Squirrel Girl (recommended highly for kids!) while EV spent the entire time hanging off of me and giggling with glee.

What’s interesting about those books is that they include varying amounts of action and extremely distinct artwork, but they are each about more than a superhero who happens to have breasts. They feature women being women. I don’t mean doing “girl” things. I mean as heroes, their women are distinct in their voices, actions, hopes, and fears from male characters. They could not simply be gender-swapped.

The exercise lead me to look through EVs other books with a critical eye. Most protagonist characters in baby books default to male – the female is almost always the mother! And do you know how many books we have that feature a father in something other than a vestigial, dismissal role? Only a handful I can think of – Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Gaiman’s delightful Fortunately, The Milk, the classic Make Way For Ducklings, and my favorite, Maurice Sendak’s Pierre. However, of those, three of the protagonists are male and three have mothers as the primary female.

In case you are ever wondering – representation matters. Even a baby who cannot say a single word will tune in to media with a character she identifies with more readily than one she doesn’t. I didn’t have to run a very length or scientific experiment to figure it out. When we’re asking to see Black Widow on Avengers merchandise or wondering if we could see Miles Morales – a black, latino Spider-Man – onscreen, it’s not just because we like those characters or are demanding diversity for diversity’s sake.

We want the next generation of real life superheroes to see themselves in the media we allow them to consume.

(Little does EV realize that I have every issue of Wonder Woman from 1975 to present sitting in the attic, waiting to be read to her.)

(I’m also excited to capitalize on her Spider-Lady Love when Silk hits TPB later this year, since she is a rarely-represent female asian hero that’s not the sex-bomb yellow-face routine of Psylocke.)