The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 7 by North, Henderson & Renzi

This is volume seven of something, I'm coming to it about two years later, and I'm typing this on Christmas day between other festivities. [1] So I expect this will be a short and perfunctory post -- those of you who care about Squirrel Girl likely read this book a while ago, and I don't have high hopes of convincing any of the rest of you at this point.

So, first up, this comes after the previous collections of the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comic: one and two and three and four and five and six. And also the OGN, which slots in around volume four or so.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 7: I've Been Waiting for a Squirrel Like You is written by Ryan North (except one short story in issue 26), drawn by Erica Henderson (except issue 26, though she wrote one story there) and colored by Rico Renzi (who only did part of issue 26). It collects issues 22-26 of the comic of the title and something called A Year of Marvels: The Unbeatable #1 -- which is actually written by Nilah Magruder with layouts by Geoffo and final art by Siya Oum -- that I think was part of some series of one-offs (maybe to introduce new talent?) that I have never heard of before and which is unconnected to the main story.

The Unbeatable is a perfectly OK sixteen-page story in which Squirrel Girl's sidekick Tippy-Top (a squirrel) teams up with Rocket Raccoon (from the Guardians of the Galaxy) to defeat a villain in New York's Central Park, who has brought trees to life and intends to Conquer the World! So, yeah, that's a thing tacked on the end of this book.

The aforementioned issue 26 is a jam issue -- I suspect it was also the "help Henderson stay on track with monthly deadlines" issue, since drawing twenty-plus pages of girls and squirrels monthly is relentless and time-consuming -- featuring stories drawn by Madeline McGrane, Chip Zdarsky, Tom Fowler, Carla Speed McNeil, Michael Cho, Razzah, Anders Nilsen, Rico Renzi, and Jim "Garfield" Davis. It has a lot of clever stuff, but -- since it's all officially stories told by characters from the Squirrel Girl comic -- it's also pretty inside-baseball, amusing and fun but slight and entirely for fans.

The main bulk of the book, though, is a five-part story in which Doreen Green (also known as the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl) and her best friend and roommate Nancy Whitehead win a computer-programming contest to go to the Savage Land, the alien-created area of Antarctica where dinosaurs still roam. Complications ensue there, not least the discovery of "Ultron, who is a dinosaur now." (One might be surprised that it took North, famously creator of Dinosaur Comics, to get dinosaurs into this book.) If you are wondering if Doreen and her friends -- including a supposedly-unfriendly programming team from Latveria, Doctor Doom's homeland -- defeat Ultron and save the world, please see the title again.

As always, this is fun and zippy and does not take itself entirely seriously. It is a comic set in a superhero universe featuring a young woman who is a bit zaftig, has sensible hair and a reasonably sensible costume, and prefers to talk to people rather than punch them. Of course it ended: how could such a thing last? (Has she been rebooted with peekaboo cutouts and a tragic backstory yet?)

[1] Not a whole lot of festivities, since it is 2020, but small, sensible, socially distanced festivities.