Comic Book / The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

Not pictured: Doctor Doom

♫ Squirrel Girl, Squirrel Girl! She's a human and also a squirrel!
Can she climb up a tree? Yes, she can, easily!
That's whyyyyyyyy her name is Squirrel Girl!
Is she tough? Listen, bud: she's got partially squirrel blood!
Who's her friend? Don't you know: that's the squirrel, Tippy-Toe!
Surprise! She likes to talk to squirrels!
At the top of trees, is where she spends her time
Like a huuuuuuuuman squirrel. She enjoys fighting crime!
Squirrel Girl, Squirrel Girl! Powers of both squirrel and girl!
Find some nuts, eat some nuts! Kicks bad guuuuuys' evil butts!
To her, life is a great big acorn! Where there's a city crime-torn,
you'll find the Squirrel Girl! ♫

— Doreen Green, the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (To the Tune of... "Spider-Man")

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was an ongoing monthly comic book published by Marvel Comics, debuting January 2015. After years spent on the sidelines of the Marvel Universe as a Lethal Joke Character (and official nanny of The Avengers), Doreen Green (Squirrel Girl) finally gets her own solo title in the form of this book. Having recently enrolled at Empire State University, Doreen just wants to be a normal college student like everybody else — easier said than done, when you got threats like Galactus, Devourer of Worlds on your (literal) tail.

Written by Ryan North and illustrated by Erica Henderson, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is perhaps the gentlest, wackiest, weirdest book Marvel's put out in quite some time — rivalled only by the Howard the Duck series that came out just months later.

After an initial run of eight issues, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was relaunched as part of the All-New, All-Different Marvel initiative. ("Only Our Second #1 Issue So Far This Year!"). Henderson left as artist after Issue #31 and was replaced by Derek Charm.

The series also has an OGN, Squirrel Girl Beats Up The Marvel Universe, released alongside the second series and taking place between issues 11 and 12 of that series.

On May 2019, Ryan announced that the staff unanimously figured they went as far with the character they could go. Thus the series would come to an end at its 50th issue and end on a high note. And indeed, the series closed shop in November 2019. In 2022, however, the characters made a brief return in the six episode podcast series Marvel’s Squirrel Girl: The Unbeatable Radio Show, written by North.

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Tropes:

• Achievements in Ignorance: When she's trapped in a Battle in the Center of the Mind, she overcomes "Count Nefaria" - because she has no idea who Count Nefaria is, confuses him with a certain Muppet with a similar name, and can easily distract this dream-Count by teaching him a new way to count.
• The Adjectival Superhero: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Maureen Green, Doreen's mom. She has all the childhood stories and the baby pictures.
• Amazonian Beauty: Doreen usually looks plump when fully dressed, but Henderson's drawings of her in a Fur Bikini during the Savage Land arc made her look seriously muscular.
• Ambiguously Bi: It might be a case of If It's You, It's Okay on Doreen's part, but there does seem to be a certain attraction between her and Nancy. It's especially clear in Hypertime where it's heavily hinted that their relationship turned romantic during the decades they were stuck in hypertime.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Kraven The Hunter threatens Tippy Toe, which Doreen does not take kindly to.
• Art Shift:
  • When Galactus describes how the flaws in his world-devouring M.O. have brought him failure in the past, the style changes to classic Kirby, complete with an ultra-dramatic Silver Surfer pose.
  • When Mole Man relates his backstory, the style changes to a collage of 19th-century illustrations, courtesy of David Malki.
• Asteroids Monster: Enigmo has this ability as a form of Self-Duplication and uses it to take over the USA. He gets pretty tiny but can grow his duplicates to human size with enough food and subsequently merge those duplicates into a giant (but without the Required Secondary Powers heroes like Ant-Man has to function at that size).
• Bad Date: Volume 2, #8 featured a montage of these for Doreen, including dates with the Human Torch, a couple villains, and a Sentinel. It ends with a date with a guy who thinks superheroes are a government conspiracy. Stupid, until you remember flat earthers exist.
• Badass Adorable: The first scene of this book opens with Doreen fighting off muggers... While singing a customized version of Spider-Man's theme song.
• Bad Future: Volume 2 #48 begins in one. In typical Squirrel Girl fashion it's declared post-apocalyptic but still essentially decent. Doreen's older (and seems to have artificial limbs), Tippy Toe is now a Brain in a Jar and Nancy is dead. Doreen manipulates time travel to prevent Nancy's death, which rewrites things.
• Been There, Shaped History: Kang claims he gave famous authors their quotations. A footnote explains he spent an entire month doing so just to be annoying.
• Berserk Button: Do not dare to damage Doreen's Deadpool trading cards, you'll regret it.
• Big Damn Heroes: Loki of all people winds up saving the day in Issue #8. Helping to distract Ratotoskr long enough so the Thors can get their hits in and Doreen can free herself.
  • Happens several times in the series finale, including Tippy-Toe's squirrel army, the Avengers, a teamup of almost everyone Doreen's befriended - including villains - and Galactus himself. You really don't get bigger than that, people.
• Big "WHAT?!": Tippy-Toe's reaction upon learning Doreen's chosen major, computer science:
  Tippy-Toe: WHAT? You got accepted into college and you're not even gonna major in SQUIRRELS?
  Doreen: I'm Squirrel Girl, not Achieving Consistency Across Distributed Database Systems Girl.
• Bittersweet Ending: In Issue #8, at least for Agent Loki. While things end on a pretty good note for them, anyone familiar with their own book knows that things are about to come crashing down hard around them, particularly their friendship with Thor. The footnotes even suggest you avoid said book if you want that happy feeling to last.
• Boyish Short Hair: Due to the new design, Doreen's hair often time looks like this. Combined with a few outfits in the series, you'd be forgiven for thinking she looks a boy sometimes.
• Book Ends: The first issue starts with Squirrel Girl singing a filk of the Spider-Man (1967) theme about her while out on patrol. The final issue has another version of that song about the revelation of her civilian identity as the accompaniment for a CGI deepfake video of her past adventures created by Tony Stark.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Galactus of all people is prone to this. From threatening you with the destruction of your world if you can't solve the "Choose Your Own Adventure" issue to getting into arguments with the narrator.
• Brick Joke: In #32, Doreen explains to Kraven that she can tuck her tail into her pants, and he understands that fur is compressible because he can sometimes fit his usual costume under street clothes. In #34, while fighting Spider-Man, he rips off his courtroom suit to reveal his usual costume.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In Issue #40, Tony Stark calls a press conference to reveal Squirrel Girl is alive and a Skrull died in her place. Instead of shocked gasps, the gathered press are just bored.
  Betty Brandt: The Bugle's obituary desk has had to publish retractions seven times on you alone, Mr. Stark. This is less a "twist" than it is a "Tuesday."
• California University: Doreen attends Empire State University, the go-to college of the Marvel Universe.
• Call-Back: The second issue featured both multiple references to her debut issue when she defeated Dr Doom, and a bit featuring the Squirrel-A-Gig, a one-off vehicle from the Deadpool/GLI Summer Fun Spectacular.
  • An even bigger one to her first appearance. Back then she faced Doctor Doom and this happened◊. In her new series, she faces him again, and thanks to some time travel shenanigans...◊ Note that even the positioning is the same.
• The Cameo: Comic blogger Betty Felon and artist Jordan Gibson show up as a pair of students in Issue #1. They also appear in Issue #7 as two of the rioters that get tied up by Thor.
• Captive Date: Subverted. Mole Man threatens to destroy various buildings until Squirrel Girl goes on a date with him. This just makes her decide to beat him up instead of trying to talk things out.
• Characterization Marches On: After Brain Drain's robotic body is repaired, he speaks fairly eloquently and has a basic learned gentleman persona with a slightly nihilistic bent. By his next appearance he is speaking in all caps, relates all observations to his nihilist philosophy and is unable to remember whether or not humans are able to split into duplicate, smaller humans at will.
• Chew Bubblegum: Parodied several times during her fight with Galactus. The first time, he can't hear her because they're in space, and the second time, when she does it while touching his feet so that he can feel the vibrations, he interrupts her.
  Doreen: [while touching Galactus's foot] We're, uh, we're here to kick butts and eat nuts, and—
  Galactus: [grabs Doreen by the helmet] And let me guess: you are all out of nuts.
  Doreen: Basically, that's the gist of it, yes.
  Tippy Toe: Also, you, uh, you can't eat nuts in space without a special helmet.
  Doreen: Yeah, also, you can't eat nuts in space without a special helmet. I mean, you could, obviously, since you're Galactus, but, uh... But we couldn't.
  • And later:
    Galactus: I did not come here to discuss linguistics, I came here to kick butts and feed on life energy. And I can do both whenever I want. Because I'm Galactus.
• Clark Kenting: Doreen barely qualifies, and it's a bit of a Running Gag that her feeble efforts work at all. The need for a disguise is much greater for former adversary Brain Drain, who - as a Brain in a Jar with a robotic body - would kind of stand out. Yet nobody finds 'Brian Drayne's' fondness for parkas, scarves, stocking caps, and oven mitts unusual. The domino mask he dons for his 'heroic' identity is less effective.
• Colony Drop: Kang drops a satellite on Doreen in their fight. It stuns her, while the narration notes this is an extremely expensive method of fighting and it does not endorse it.
• Comically Missing the Point: One of the reasons^* The reasons are the Three C's: companionship, cuteness, and comically missing the point! Tippy-Toe is always by Doreen's side is because one or the other of them is generally going to miss the point.
• Compressed Hair: She manages to hide her huge bushy tail in a relatively normal-looking pair of slacks. Though she lampshades that doing so gives her Hartman Hips.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In Issue #6, the panel featuring the New York Bulletin's top stories include "Astronomers: 'That Nut Planet We Discovered Last Month Isn't There Anymore, Weird", and "Kraven Apparently Hunting Fish, Transatlantic News Cables".
  • In the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, Galactus threatens the reader with the destruction of the Earth unless they are able to pick the correct path. At the end, he reveals that he was lying, the "planet" is actually a cake, and he doesn't destroy worlds anymore.
  • Later he also appears to complain when the narrator uses his world eating as an example of the weirdness of the Marvel Universe.
    Galactus: Please, that was the old Galactus. Seriously. I haven't done that in literally weeks.
• Crossover: with the new Howard the Duck. And both Doreen and Howard show up in background scenes of Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Hellcat!.
• Continuity Snarl: Design changes don't really trickle down to this book from the rest of Marvel for some reason. So Galactus continues to be purple instead of gold, Loki still looks like he did before Secret Wars (2015), etc..
• A Day in the Limelight: #15 follows Nancy's cat Mew as the other characters battle the Taskmaster.
• Deadpan Snarker: Nancy is usually in this role, although Squirrel Girl's Blithe Spirit tends to provoke this in even the most unexpected places.
  Doctor Doom: [rolling his eyes as SG and Nancy discuss his Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory] Amateurs.
• Deducing the Secret Identity: Nancy instantly sees through Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boi's Paper Thin Disguises and recognizes them as her classmates Tomas and Ken. When Squirrel Girl expresses shock, Nancy asks how she could possibly have fallen for the ruse when all the boys use to hide their identities are Domino Masks. Plus, when your roomie is obsessed with squirrels, and then you meet a female superhero who calls herself "Squirrel Girl"? It's easy to make the connection.
• Didn't Think This Through: Melissa's plan to frame Squirrel Girl for her own crimes nearly works and her defeat even inspires her to fix the flaws in her plan... But it never occurred to her that Doreen's friends and fellow superheroes can easily vouch for her character when it's time for arrests.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Doreen's battle with Galactus ends with her befriending him and finding him an uninhabited planet to devour, then hanging out on the moon.
• Direct Line to the Author: A footnote from Ryan North in one issue states "Listen, I don't make up these puns. I just write them down after following Doreen and Nancy around all day. It's actually a pretty great job, and they ignore me most of the time now!"
• Distracted by the Sexy: Doreen when she's around Tomas.
• Duck!: The joke is nearly obligatory in the Howard the Duck crossover.
  Doreen: Hey Nancy?
  Nancy: Yeah?
  Doreen: [while jumping out of the window] DUCK!!
  Howard: [runs away with Nancy's cat] WAAUGH!
• Ear Worm: As suggested by the title quote, the Spider-Man theme song keeps getting filked with new lyrics by and about Doreen. (the footnotes also have other versions, and Squirrel Girl Beats Up The Marvel Universe has a ringtone attempting lyrics about Hellcat). Directly invoked by the narrator in the first issue of Volume 2, and the series ends with a version about the revelation of her civilian identity.
• Easily Forgiven: Deconstructed in issues #34-35 where Doreen discovers that even though she's convinced that Kraven's a good guy, many other people aren't, and she hadn't been aware of just how villainous he'd been in the past. Finally, he admits to her that he isn't fully reformed, and she recognises just how much work he still has to do.
• Epilogue Letter: The first run ends with Loki's letter to Ratotoskr, which explains the plan and has serious footnote fever basically creating a written representation of the Heel–Face Revolving Door (from villain to hero to troll).
• Evil Twin: Played with Doreen's clone Allene. She's initially very friendly, but it becomes apparent that she was created without the ability to compromise. This quickly becomes a problem. Once she relearns this ability, she quickly offers to atone for her actions.
• Exact Words:
  • Abused by Doctor Doom, as usual. Nancy can't believe that a supervillain who runs his own country uses "baby word games" to get out of promises.
  • During the final battle, the main villain says that all the friendship on Earth won't save Doreen. Too bad for Melissa, Squirrel Girl has friends who aren't from Earth. Like Galactacus, who intervenes and Power Cosmic's her and her supervillain team-up away.
• Expy:
  • Koi Boi is essentially a Superfriends-era Aquaman, with his powers being played for comedic purposes.
  • In the Howard the Duck crossover, Biggs the cybernetically augmented cat is a blatant take-off of 2 the cat from WE 3.
• False Flag Operation: Melissa's plan entirely revolves around making Squirrel Girl look like she's pulling this, controlling every animal and creating villains to look more heroic.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: The guy Doreen most successfully dates in Issue #8 of Volume Two turns out to be a superhero truther who not only doesn't believe in the existence of superheroes (or aliens, or magic, etc.) but has elaborate conspiracy theories to explain them all away.
  Brad: [while being seized by enormous monsters] Take pictures of this! You have to show the world, babe! You have to show the media that advanced animatronics are being used in so-called 'super hero' false flag operations!
• Footnote Fever: The comic book borrows a feature from webcomics by having the authors' comments appear at the bottom of the screen. (In the Howard the Duck crossover, the writers of both series were commenting. Sometimes about each others' comments.)
• Forgot About His Powers: Her retractable knuckle spikes, which (up until the fight against dinosaur Ultron) haven't been mentioned since her first appearance, 25 years earlier. Doreen says she keeps forgetting about them herself, mainly because she really doesn't have reasons to stab people anyway.
• Fun with Acronyms: Elderly future versions of Doreen call herself "Old Lady Doreen", and declare it's one of the perks of being elderly that she can now sign letters as "O.L.D.".
• Fur Bikini: Doreen's costume in the Savage Land arc, because any superheroine who goes to the Savage Land will inevitably end up in a Stripperiffic Jungle Girl variation of her usual costume.
• Gender Flip: In the original Norse myths (and also when briefly appearing in Thor), Ratatoskr was generally referred to as male. Here, she is repeatedly stated to be female.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Nancy's take the form of current (good angel) and fifteen years old (bad angel) Squirrel Girl.
• Great Big Book of Everything: Well, great big trading card collection of everything super-villainy. "Deadpool's Guide to Super-Villains" (4522 cards) and "Deadpool's Guide to Super Villains Super Accessories" (1622 cards).
• Hunk/Dashing Hispanic: Chipmunk Hunk fancies himself this, purposefully trying to invoke these Tropes. In practice, he comes off more as a lovable dork, though.
• Hidden Depths: It's a bit of a Running Gag that Tippy-Toe is more genre savvy than her boss. She is particularly familiar with Time Travel Tropes - and references the Butterfly Effect by name. (For those of you new to all this, Tippy-Toe is an ordinary squirrel.)
• Hurricane of Puns: The whole series is very puny but dear gods the clubs. All the clubs. The punning tendency also got lampshaded by the second sets of footnotes of the Howard the Duck crossover:
  "Ugh I didn't realize this was a crossover with the Punisher."
• Idea Bulb: Doreen gets one in the shape of an acorn.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The TPB collections are all titled with pop music quotations, but with the word "girl" replaced with the word "squirrel".
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Tricephalous to Mole Man, it is revealed. Doreen manages to set them up as a couple to cure Mole Man of his obsession with her.
• Implausible Deniability: The Deadpool trading card on Skrulls stops halfway through telling people how Skrulls can never be trusted to inform all that SKRULLS ARE GREAT AND TRUSTWORTHY. ALL HAIL THE SKRULLS!... It'd be more convincing if the new writer hadn't felt the need to change to a green font color.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: In Issue #38, Tony Stark tells Squirrel Girl and Nancy that he believes a Skrull imposter is on the loose. They create an offhand code word to use just in case it tries to impersonate Tony. When they call later, Tony doesn't use that phrase. Doreen (in her "normal" guise) and Nancy go to see him with Tony showing he was wrong and there is no Skrull invasion and he just forgot the phrase. They chew him out for it but are ready to leave.
  Tony: So, Doreen! I know Nancy's been photographed helping her crimefight but since we're all friends here, I was curious... How do you know Squirrel Girl?
  Beat Panel of Doreen and Nancy staring.
  Doreen: Oh. Oh, Tony. So close.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Nancy is introduced as one from the start. One of her first lines to Doreen is that she won't tolerate any "talking smack" about Mew.
• Lame Comeback: As the commentary says, SG didn't have a lot of time to prepare battle-banter for her fight with Kraven the Hunter.
  Squirrel Girl: [leaping at Kraven from out of a tree] Hey Kraven! You're a jerk who suuuucks!
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • The line about Doreen being "legally distinct from a mutant" (with the emphasis on "legally") is a reference to the ongoing rights issues between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Fox's X-Men franchise.
  • The finale issue has Galactus discussing with Doreen how, the next time they meet, that they might be completely different people. In spite of this he says that how they are now will always exist, and thus always matter.
• Logical Weakness: Squirrel Girl has Wolverine-style claws, though she doesn't use them much. Mostly because she doesn't really want to stab anyone, but also because she doesn't have healing factor, and getting the blood of her enemies into her system would be... Unhealthy.
  • Swarm, the villain who's a sentient swarm of bees (and also a Nazi) has to halt and let Doreen talk when she threatens to activate the sprinklers. Since bees can't fly when they're wet.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: The Trope Namer is referenced in the Author's Note in issue #47, when Doreen and Nancy visit the Ozymandias Statue Park.
  All I know is that statue park in particular is going to last forever , and I am definitely not interested in reading any poetry that suggests otherwise!!!
• Malicious Misnaming. "Prairie Dog Costume Woman" and "Furry Woodland Creature Lady" are two digs at Squirrel Girl's codename, courtesy of Kraven The Hunter.
  • Chipmunk Hunk, having explained to Tippy-Toe that chipmunks are not monks, has to endure some joshing about being 'Chipmonk Honk'.
• Me's a Crowd: How do you defeat a time-traveling Dr. Doom? Multiple time loops and a friend who can translate C++ to assembly in her head.
• Mood Whiplash: Brain Drain successfully manages to talk Spider-Man down from a fight at one point. Then he admits his speech was largely based on speculation, and asks Spidey to ignore it if it's not true.
• Most Definitely Not a Villain:
  • The ex-Hydra cyborg when they enroll him in the university. Complete with a badge with HUMAN written on it.
  • Tippy-Toe's version of Doreen's dating profile. It even has the username a_human_irl.
• Muggle Best Friend: Nancy. Once Koi Boy and Chipmunk Hunk show up, she's disgruntled to realize she's become "the Xander".
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: Despite the comic seemingly initially being aimed at the fans of Squirrel Girl's Memetic Badassness, the comic ended up appealing to young girls, and the parents of them, as an introductory comic to the medium.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: G'Illiam the benevolent Skrull refugee in #37-40.
• Never Trust a Title: In The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up The Marvel Universe, the beating up was actually done by her clone.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Squirrel Girl apologizing and giving Mole Man respect leads to him falling for her, destroying several buildings and landmarks, the media harassing her, and Spider-Man attempting to take credit for saving the day on Twitter.
• No-Sell: Her initial encounter with Howard the Duck ends with him throwing pieces of garbage at her to get her to stop chasing him. Though she knocks the first piece away, she then proceeds to let each successive piece bounce off her while she checks her Deadpool Villain cards for information on Howard.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Played for Laughs with a fake out. The end of Issue #3 has Galactus and Doreen about to face off. 4 starts with her sitting on a collapsed Galactus going "Well, that was easy." followed by the issue's mailbag. Then we get a Whole Episode Flashback showing what actually happened. Issue #7 gives us several more as Doreen and company stop the mobs and riots caused by Ratotoskr, including defeating five Avengers in only 26 seconds.
• Our Clones Are Different: The Marvel OGN The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe sees Squirrel Girl cloned by accident in the midst of a superhero battle. She and the clone seem almost exactly the same and they quickly become a team. However it soon becomes clear that the clone doesn't have the original's ability to compromise, causing her to become an anti-villain who sets out to make the world a better place for squirrels, plunging the city into chaos and taking out the Avengers along the way.
• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • The only real difference between Squirrel Girl and Doreen Green is the lack of a large Prehensile Tail, which happens to double as "a conspicuously large and conspicuously awesome butt" when stuffed into her pants.
  • Lampshaded when Nancy easily guesses Chipmunk Hunk's identity and then says that Domino Masks don't work well in real life.
  • Nancy finds an article written by Charles Xavier under the pseudonym "Chuck X. Avier."
• Persona Non Grata: Nancy and Doreen meet some Latverian citizens and learn that Doom's propaganda terribly vilifies Squirrel Girl.
• Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: Loki claims that the last time Ratotoskr was loose, "all the raptors got replaced by hairless apes who invented fax machines."
• The Power of Friendship: Doreen is a big believer. Most of the time, when she's defeating villains way out of her weight class, it's either because she befriends them or because other villains she befriended help her out.
• Retcon: The series invokes Canon Discontinuity on her mutant status, instead saying multiple times that she has "partially squirrel blood." The first issue of the second run made it clear - in a deliberately overblown way - that she is Most Definitely Not A Mutant. Doreen was born with her powers, apparently because her mother suffered almost every superpower-granting trope (from squirrel bites to radioactive trees and untested nut products) during her eventful pregnancy. Sadly, the real reason for the Retcon probably has less to do with leaving Doreen free for live-action appearances and more to do with making sure that her fun comics aren't burdened down by the rather dark problems all the mutant heroes are coping with in the All-New Marvel Universe. New Avengers (2015) uses it to handwave why the whole terrigen trouble doesn't affect her.
• Retroactive Preparation: Kang tries doing this against Squirrel Girl, but he is repeatedly thwarted.
• Revenge via Storytelling: In one issue, Squirrel Girl and her friends make comics. However, Kraven creates a story insulting Spider-Man and praising himself, prompting Spider-Man to title his story ''Hey Kraven Squirrel Girl Showed Me Your Comic, So What The Heck".
• Rule of Funny: Galactus cloaking himself to all human technology, but forgetting to shield against squirrel eyesight? Why yes, Mr. North, you are totally allowed to get away with that.
• Scary Librarian: In Issue #35, the angry ghost of an early-twentieth-century librarian places the whole city under a spell of silence.
• Secret Identity: Doreen uses one in this run, more out of a belief that that's how super-heroing works than from necessity. Nancy figures it out by Issue #4, however. As of Issue #6 we can call this Nancy's superpower as she sees through the Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boi in less than a scene.
• Sheathe Your Sword:
  • Doreen decides the best way to defeat Kraven The Hunter is through reasoning with him, recognizing his Challenge Seeker-tendencies and suggesting he look for a deadlier catch than herself or Spider-Man.
  • Doreen does the same thing to Galactus. She shows him a planet full of nuts that he can get life-energy from, rather than eating Earth.
  • Done once again in Issue #6 against Hippo. After Hippo reveals he's only robbing banks because it's hard to get a job, she suggests he go into demolition instead using his powers.
  • Again with The Rhino.
• Shout-Out:
  • The girl running the booth for the "Humans vs. Zombies Club" in Issue #2 looks like Michonne.
  • "You know what happens to a squirrel when it gets mad? The same thing that happens to everything else."
  • In Issue #6, Nancy finds an article written by "Chuck X. Avier," which opens with a parody of the evolution monologues used in the first two X-Men movies.
  • When Nancy realizes she's the only person in her immediate circle of friends without superpowers, she laments that this makes her "The Xander" of the group.
  • During the time-travel arc, Doreen's trenchcoat and hat when spying on Dr. Doom's lair is a copy of Secret Squirrel's costume.
  • The fake eating contest that Swarm sets up to distract other heroes is supposedly sponsored by Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, and Book, the law firm Jennifer Walters worked for in the Dan Slott era of She-Hulk.
  • In the Howard the Duck crossover, Howard dons a super-cosplay outfit consisting of a red cape, bat-themed power armor, a gold lasso, a mace and a green ring that shoots lasers.
  • In #29, Loki tries to invoke the gibbering madness of Ulyaoth.
  • One of Doreen's tweets in the beginning of issue #33 reads "I AM FORTUNE'S FOOL," which is a verbatim quote from Romeo and Juliet, which Ryan North has written a parody of.
  • One story involves “The Reign of the Octopals”, four Doctor Octopus look-alikes running around while he’s dead, including a young one, a cyborg, one with huge sunglasses and one wielding hammers.
  • In the Savage Land storyline there’s the employee Donnie, who wears a purple shirt and “does machines”.
  • When everyone gets arrested wakes up in a police cell at the beginning of #34, Brian Drain parodies the opening line of "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka.
  • The bookcase of books on librarians in #35 is filled with books that parody the titles of famous works with library jokes.
  • Issue #47 ends with the traditional character profiles, and describes Nancy, Mary, Chipmunk Hunk, Koi Boi and Doreen as "Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken".
• Space Is Noisy: Averted! Doreen starts boasting to Galactus, until she realizes he probably can't hear her.
  Tippy-Toe: Wait, he's got the Power Cosmic, right? Doesn't that let you talk in space?
  Doreen: I dunno, dude, that seems super impossible. Sound needs a medium to travel in, Power Cosmic or not! Galactus needs a Tony's Own(TM) Radio Transmitter in his helmet or something.
• Speaks Fluent Animal:
  • Doreen apparently speaks with a "Northeastern" dialect of Squirrelese. Just guess what's included in the Chipmunk Hunk's and Koi Boi's superpower package. Poor Nancy feels very left out. (By Issue #20 of Volume Two, she takes enough squirrel language classes to at least understand Squirrel Girl's smarter/better at communicating with humans squirrel friends.)
  • Galactus is perfectly able to understand squirrels. He can't understand why Squirrel Girl is surprised at this:
    Galactus: For he who wields the Power Cosmic can shoot lasers out of his eyes, teleport, and create or destroy life across all of space and time. So obviously talking to squirrels is not really that big a deal.
  • Doreen's guest appearance in All-New Wolverine established that she tends to assume this as part of the powerset of all animal themed superbeings. So when she needed to talk to Mew in v2 Issue #27... Cue montage of her unsuccessfully asking cat related superheroes like Tigra, White Tiger, Kitty Pryde, Beast, and Hellcat for help.
• Spear Counterpart: There is a hero named Chipmunk Hunk in this series, who sounds like a male version of Squirrel Girl.
• Spot the Thread: When she's trapped in time, Doreen manages to find another person from the present due to her using modern headphones.
• Stable Time Loop: According to the footnotes on the epilogue page for the time travelling arc featuring Doctor Doom, Old Lady Squirrel Girl, in her will, left the time blaster to Cody... What is exactly what kicked off this plot. Also there is an Old Lady Squirrel Girl and a time blaster with circular origin now.
• Stalker with a Crush: Of all people, Mole Man to Doreen in volume 2 #8-10.
• Stealth in Space: Why has nobody else noticed Galactus coming?
  Tippy Toe: Near as we can figure out, he's coming in with some stealth field around the ship, so everyone else just sees the stars they're expecting. But he forgot to make it work on squirrels!
• The Stinger:
  • Issue #1 ends with a tease of what's to come later in the book: Galactus.
  • The end of the Doctor Doom arc has a stinger showing Doom prepared to Exact Words his promise not to use time travel anymore by sending his Doombots back in time instead, only for elderly Squirrel Girl to steal it before he has the chance.
  • The end of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe has a stinger showing Arlene Green gearing up to kick Annihilus's butt.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Squirrel Girl was saving the Savage Land from Ultron during Secret Empire and felt that she wasn't needed because the other heroes could handle the situation.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Courtesy of Ratatoskr showing her true form at the end of Issue #20 of Volume Two.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Doreen really, really isn't very good at Clark Kenting.
  • Upon meeting someone on campus:
    Doreen: I'm Doreen, and I'm actually a totally regular person.
  • And once again later, after talking her way out of a fight with Kraven The Hunter amidst fellow students:
    Doreen: Okay, well, bye everyone! I don't know any of you and I definitely don't go to school here!
  • And, when she gets sent to the past in the All-New All-Different comics, she puts out an ad in the newspaper full of l33t speak and memes, just to draw in other people who have been stranded in the 1960s.
    SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION brought to you by: DOREEN GREEN, REGULAR HUMAN from THIS TIME PERIOD!
  • The first issue of her ANAD run has her frustratingly chastise her in-costumed friends and Nancy for nonchalantly entering her house, before "pretending" aloud to follow inside in order to "rescue" someone as justification for why Squirrel Girl would do so.
  • Happens again during her cameo in Starbrand & Nightmask. Doreen goes to deliver some letters to one "Imani Greene" (she apparently gets a lot of Imani's letters), only for Tippy-Toe's being on Doreen's shoulder to be questioned. She fervently denies her being a real squirrel "cause that'd be weird." Tippy-Toe whispers something in her ear, and Doreen adds, "It's animatronic!"
    Doreen: [to herself as she walks away] Whew! My super-secret identity as Squirrel Girl is still secret.
• Take That!: Doreen blows off Spider-Man's attempts to get her involved in Secret Empire in favor of saving dinosaurs with her computer science skills. Besides being more fun for her she knows the other heroes can handle it and at the end things will be different except not really.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Doreen's no slouch when it comes to combat, but more often than not she manages to get villains to back off simply by convincing them of better, less destructive alternatives. Heck, she saved Earth this way against Galactus of all people.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Doreen completely thwarts Nightmare's attempts to destroy her sanity by a combination of being too ignorant of villains' capabilities to have nightmares about them, defaulting to talking about Computer Science to confront the ones she does know, and just plain being too positive a force for good to be broken down by Nightmare's scenarios.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Since they didn't have any fanmail yet, the letters column in the back of the first issue consists almost entirely of "Who would win in a fight, Squirrel Girl or [insert character here]?"
• Unreliable Narrator: Most of the "submissions" in volume 2. Issue #26 aka the zine issue, but special mention goes to Loki, who not only manages to screw with the format by making it a spiral comic, but saying the exact opposite depending on which way you read it while giving instructions to both.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Doreen tries to sneak into "Stark and/or Avenger's Tower" and gets caught and kicked out. Then reveals her real plan was to be a distraction while her squirrels snuck in and nabbed parts for a suit. Directly lampshaded by the author's note:
  I didn't let you, the reader, know her plan because it's a better narrative surprise this way! Also: how do I know I can trust you, huh?? You could be literally anyone.
• Vague Age: Because of how inconsistently she's been written and drawn since her first appearance in 1992, Doreen's actual age has been a subject of contention for many, but the premise of this book suggests she's old enough to be a freshman in college — probably eighteen or nineteen.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Squirrel Girl and Tony Stark frequently trade barbs and snark on twitter, Doreen "borrows" his tech frequently, and they argue loudly about using duplication technology when they meet in-person, but they're good allies and Tony stops in the middle of a fight to compliment her story-telling techniques.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?:
  • How Doreen shrugs off Tippy-Toe's warning about some colossal, incoming threat on its way to Earth, at the end of the first issue.
  • 2nd volume #27's solicit contains this gem referencing the trope (doubles as pre-emptive Continuity Nod as that's what actually will go on in Doctor Strange at the time the issue is scheduled to come out):
    This sounds like a job for the Sorcerer Supreme! I’m sure Doctor Strange will be happy to he – I’m sorry, what’s that? Doctor Strange is gone and now LOKI is Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme? Oh. Well, I’m sure he’ll do his best. After all, what could possibly go wrong? Guess what, in this issue, everything possible goes wrong!
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: When Nancy reveals she's figured out Doreen's secret and suggests she work on disguising her voice while in costume:
  Nancy: Ever thought of putting on, I don't know, like an Irish accent?
  Doreen: Oi! Spot of bother with the baddies, mumsie?!
  Nancy: Okay, first, that wasn't even Irish, and second, never ever ever do that again.
• Whole Episode Flashback: #16 tells new stories of Doreen's life, from birth to the potential future, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her very first appearance in Marvel Superheroes Vol. 2 #8.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • Vol. 1 #5, with various civilians telling wild stories about their idea of who Squirrel Girl is, is a parody of the famous story "The Batman Nobody Knows" from Batman #250, in which three Gotham City kids tell Bruce Wayne wild tales about Batman on a camping trip.
  • "Hypertime" strongly resembles the Grand Finale of Futurama, only with Nancy and Doreen in the roles of Leea and Fry.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Melissa Morbeck's favorite phrase. Unfortunately she means something radically different by it than most people would.
• Wolverine Publicity:
  • The Avengers appear on the cover of the first issue, but don't actually show up in the story. At least they are obviously in an Imagine Spot.
  • Parody of the trope from the solicits of Issue #8 (which didn't lie, Loki did appear in the book for a couple of pages then he shapeshifted into Cat Thor for most of the issue):
    —And yes, "Norse Squirrel God" means that Thor shows up to help! AND Loki!
    —Loki’s a huge character! He's been in THREE different movies so far. Three!
    —He's only in our comic for a couple pages though.
  • Played straight the cover for Issue #1 of the relaunch. The New Avengers are prominently featured on the cover, but don't show up in the story at all.
  • Beautifully reversed in All-New Wolverine #7. Contrary to the usual way Wolverine Publicity plays out, Doreen actually plays a major role in the plot.
• Write Back to the Future: When Doreen gets teleported to the 1960s, she writes a note to Nancy and places it in a brick that would end up as a part of their apartment building. She marks the brick with an acorn. Nancy does find it.
• Xanatos Gambit: Doom quite openly admits to be playing one when teaming up with Squirrel Girl's other enemies: Either the alliance will succeed in defeating Squirrel Girl, which means Doom wins... or they'll all end up killing themselves in the attempt, meaning none of them will bother him again.
• You Can Talk?: Doreen discovering her power at the age of ten involved this.
  Doreen: Ahhh, a talking squirrel!!
  Monkey-Joe: Ahhh, a talking human!!

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