The good natured super hero known as Squirrel Girl (AKA Doreen Green) has embarked upon adventures over the years that have put her in conflict with some of the Marvel Universe's most powerful threats. Yet even when she faces someone as powerful as Thanos, the Mad Titan, Squirrel Girl always emerges victorious. While it might seems as though balancing the life of a college student and a super hero would not be as grand an adventure as the ones she had in the past as a full-time hero, writer Ryan North and artist Erica Henderson, the creative team behind the current "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" series that follows the Doreen's collegiate and heroic careers, are showing it's quite the thrill ride.
Thus far in the series Doreen has experienced a number of weird, exciting and often humorous exploits that introduced her to new friends like her college roommate Nancy Whitehead; powerful enemies who later became friends thanks to Doreen's good nature like Galactus; and bizarre menaces like the Asgardian Squirrel God Ratatoskr, the antagonist in the book's current arc. This October, North and Henderson will kick off the next leg of Doreen's collegiate and heroic journey with the launch of a brand new volume of "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl," which picks up Doreen's exploits after an eight-month time jump.
SDCC: "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" Joins "All-New, All-Different Marvel" Lineup

Announced yesterday by Marvel during their "Women of Marvel" panel at Comic-Con International in San Diego, CBR News spoke with North about Squirrel Girl's "All-New, All-Different" status quo when the series picks up, how her upcoming membership in the New Avengers will impact the book, and the critical role artist Erica Henderson plays in creating "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl's" unique and humorous tone.
You and Erica return in October to kick off a new volume of "Unbeatable Squirrel Girl." How new reader friendly will the new #1 be? Will you be bringing threads from the current volume over to this new one or starting fresh?
Ryan North: I feel like a new #1 should be accessible for new reader, absolutely! People who are starting at #1 don't want to feel like they're missing anything. That said, we just did our first #1 this year in January, and that's still all super great and super canon. So this continues everything we set up there: for current readers this will read like it was called "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" #9 (our first volume finishes with #8) -- but it also stands alone as a "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" #1 for new readers. As you can imagine, this was really tricky to write, but I finally nailed it!
"Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" is part of the "All-New All-Different Marvel" line of books. Like the other books involved, the series will be jumping eight months into Doreen's future. What can you tell us about Doreen's status quo when we pick things back up? What is each side of her life -- the college student and the super hero -- like in issue #1?
Yep! Unlike our first volume, where she was starting first year computer science, now she's starting second year computer science. And we missed out on some of the stuff that happened then -- including a crossover with someone very special -- but we'll fill in those blanks down the road!
She's also moved off-campus with her friend, Nancy, and of course now she's on the New Avengers -- so it's busy times for Squirrel Girl.
North Takes "Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" on an Adventure of Mythic Proportions
[Laughs] Speaking of collegiate life, much of the focus of your "Squirrel Girl" run so far has been about Doreen's costumed life. Will that continue in October or will you delve into more of her personal life as well?
It's funny you mention that because I always worry I'm focusing too much on Doreen's personal life! I want her to be someone you understand, so when she's punching the giant purple cosmic man's feet on the moon, you know why she's doing that. And yeah, that's not changing! So I guess what I'm saying is you have both fights and feelings to look forward to in our comic. And maybe not in that order, either!
North Takes "Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" on an Adventure of Mythic Proportions
You mentioned Squirrel Girl's membership in Sunspot's New Avengers squad. What kind of impact will that have on your title? Are you interested in having any of her teammates guest star in the book?
The best thing about writing in a shared universe is you get to play with all the other characters running around, so I'm always interested in this sort of thing. My main goal is to keep "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" straightforward for someone who only reads that book -- accessibility is important to me, and I don't want it to be a book where you have to read 10 other comics to understand what's going on -- but there's nothing there that precludes us from having fun with the new status quo, especially now that she's on a team with all the other New Avengers!
Let's tease a little bit more concretely some of the adventures that you have in store for this new volume of "Unbeatable Squirrel Girl." It seems like when it comes to super heroics this is a book that takes on all scopes of threats from world devourers and conquerors to muggers. So what can you tell us about the type of trouble Doreen will be getting into?
In the first few issues I can promise:
- pals
- cyborgs
- squirrels
- fights
- time travel
- explosions
- friendly good times
Which, writing it out like that, sounds like a comic I'd like to read. I'm glad I get to write it too!
To wrap up, I mentioned this earlier but you and Erica Henderson will continue your collaboration in this new volume of "Unbeatable Squirrel Girl." From talking with you in the past it's clear Erica is a big part of both the tone and humor of this book. When doing a comedic book like this, it seems like having an artist of Erica's caliber who can help deliver and expand upon the humor is absolutely essential, correct?
It absolutely is. I've said before that my favorite part of the job is when I get to see Erica's pencils on my scripts, because she takes what I've written and elevates it. Especially in a book where you're writing jokes, you need an artist who gets what you're doing and has the chops to make sure the jokes work when translated from words to images, and Erica's terrific at that.
It's funny, I was thinking the other day about how I have this different affection for Squirrel Girl that I don't have for other fictional characters I write, and I think a big part of that is how much Erica adds to her. Even though I'm writing her so much of who she is comes from Erica, so she can surprise me in ways someone I'm in full "control" of doesn't.
The support this book has received from its readers has been amazing -- the fan art! The cosplay -- and I can't wait to share what happens next. Also, Doreen has got a new costume in this book, so there's even more cosplay options possible now. And I want to see them all. We run a production blog at http://unbeatablesquirrelgirl.tumblr.com and at https://twitter.com/unbeatablesg where we post all the cool stuff we find, so everyone should subscribe to it right now.