The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now by Ryan North and Erica Henderson

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now, written by Ryan North and illustrated by Erica Henderson, is the third consecutive volume of Squirrel Girl comics. Although they restarted the issue numbering, they thankfully left the volume numbering in tact. For now. It's also not a terrible place to jump into the comics, although I would recommend starting with Volume 1 because then you get more Squirrel Girl and more backstory to establish the other characters with.

New series, New Avenger! With her unique combination of wit, empathy and squirrel powers, computer science student Doreen Green - aka the unbeatable Squirrel Girl - is all that stands between the Earth and total destruction. Well, Doreen plus her friends Tippy-Toe (a squirrel) and Nancy (a regular human with no powers). So, mainly Squirrel Girl. Then what hope does the Earth have if she gets hurled back in time to the 1960s and erased from history? At least Nancy will never forget her friend, but what invincible armored Avenger can she call on to help, through the magic of social media? Decades apart, can they avert doom, or will everything go wrong forever? Howard the Duck hopes not... he has an appointment for a crossover!

The opening issue is somewhat introductory, (re-)introducing Squirrel Girl, Nancy and a few other key characters. There's a bad guy attack that, in true Squirrel Girl style, is more morally grey than you might expect from a monster-of-the-issue incident.

The main story arc of this volume involves time travel to the 60s and Doctor Doom. The Doctor Doom part, actually, is probably yet another reason to read the first two volumes of Squirrel Girl. It's not strictly necessary to follow this story, but I think it still helps to provide some useful context. I quite enjoyed the story arc, especially the way the new (temporary?) side characters were integrated into the story. And I approved of it being more Nancy and less Koi Boy and Chipmunk Hunk — not that I hate the latter two, I just find them a bit meh.

The final story arc was a two-issue crossover with Howard the Duck, with the Howard the Duck issue included in this volume. I haven't read any Howard the Duck before and this arc didn't especially encourage me to. It wasn't bad, and I didn't mind seeing a new character, but I didn't find him interesting enough to bother following up. Squirrel Girl was much more interesting to me.

I enjoyed this volume of Squirrel Girl and, as always, I am looking forward to reading more Squirrel Girl when it becomes available. I highly recommend the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl to fans of humour, female characters, squirrels and computer science. If you're new to Squirrel Girl, this isn't a terrible place to start, but I think Volume 1 is an even better place to start.

5 / 5 stars

First published: June 2016, Marvel
Series: Volume 3 of ongoing series, containing issues #1–6 (and Howard the Duck #6) of the 2015B run of Squirrel Girl.
Format read: Trade paperback
Source: A comic book shop. I think it was Orbital Comics in London\