In Abandoned an' Forsaked, we examine comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Today, we look at how Squirrel Girl became the latest in a, well, not LONG line, but A line of characters thought to be mutants who turned out to not be mutants!

Squirrel Girl was introduced by Will Murray and Steve Ditko in Marvel Super-Heroes #8 in 1990. She met Iron Man in the issue...

As you can see, right from the get-go, Squirrel Girl identified herself as a mutant. This was a bit of a novelty at the time, as there were not a whole lot of mutant characters in 1990 who were not part of the X-books, whether as a literal member of an X-Men related superhero or supervillain team or as a character in one of the X-Men spinoff books, like Wolverine. Over the years, more and more characters were revealed to be mutants, but in 1990, it was still a bit of a novelty to be a mutant when you were not in the X-books. However, at the same time, Squirrel Girl captured well the feelings of the era, which is that in the Marvel Universe itself, it was not exactly a badge of pride to say that you were a mutant. Mutants were hated and feared, after all, so it makes sense that Squirrel Girl would prefer to keep that information on the down low. She only told Iron Man because, well, come on, how do you not trust Iron Man with information like that? It's not like he's going to push a Registration Act where all of your personal information would become known by the government, right?

In any event, Squirrel Girl's mutanthood was an accepted part of her background, but that was not saying much, as she did not really show up...at all. She had a trading card, though, which mentioned her mutanthood.

Things changed when she joined the Great Lakes Avengers in GLA #2...

Now here's the real kicker, at the end of that miniseries, the various members of the team all realize that they are all mutants. The Great Lakes Avengers famously changed their names after Onslaught to name themselves after the Thunderbolts and then were pissed to find out that the Thunderbolts were, you know, supervillains. So Dan Slott picked up on the thread of them changing their names to follow fads by having them change their name to GLX, in honor of the members all being mutants...

This eventually led to a GLX-Mas Special...

So, come on, you don't get much more solidly a mutant than that. She even was later revealed to have had a past with Wolverine, which is what every mutant in the world apparently has, so she was squarely in M-Town.

Until, of course, it turned out that she WASN'T a mutant...

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You may or may not know that there has been a long "thing" about the fact that Marvel does not own the film rights to the X-Men. They are owned by Fox (this is a bit of a moot point now that Fox appears to have sold its film studio to Disney, who owns Marvel). This is a big deal because it has led to a situation where it makes less sense for Marvel to push the X-books, because they don't get the full benefit of the X-Men's success.

There was this whole deal about Scarlet With and Quicksilver over who owned the rights to those characters in movies. The compromise was that when Marvel used them in Avengers: Age of Ultron, they couldn't call them mutants. Soon after, Scarlet With and Quicksilver were revealed to NOT be mutants.

At the same time, there was this big storyline where the Inhumans' Terrigen Mists became deadly for mutants.

So there was suddenly a whole thing about characters no longer being mutants and also Earth was suddenly no longer livable for mutants.

This, then, led into Ryan North and Erica Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Volume 2 #1 (it was relaunched after Secret Wars, like every other title), when we learn that, oops, Squirrel Girl is not a mutant!

This had a dual purpose. One, to make fun of the whole "people no longer being mutants" thing, but at the same time, also explain why Squirrel Girl suddenly didn't have to get off of Earth.

Now that Disney might own Fox, it will be interesting if any characters suddenly become mutants again! Maybe Squirrel Girl can "relapse"!

If anyone has suggestions of notable comic book retcons, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!