A Very Ryan North Friday

Ryan North is a writer who has slowly but surely made his way into a position where, whenever his name is attached to a project, I have to have a look. Sure, I'd read Dinosaur Comics on-line and had a good laugh. But when he started writing the Adventure Time comic, and perfectly capturing the whimsy, wit, and occasional tragedy of Finn, Jake, and all their pals, I really took notice. And with the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl from Marvel, one of the most joyful (and dense) comics on the racks, I moved from impressed to enamored. So, today, I'm going to focus on a couple of North's long form projects, things I've read recently that have been a real ray of sunshine.

Over the past few years, Marvel has developed a nice program of original graphic novels. Usually stand alone and new reader friendly, some, like Avengers: Rage of Ultron, wind up being important to main continuity, while others, like Jim Starlin's most recent Thanos trilogy, are delights for old fans who get to revisit old characters and creators that don't get as much play in the main MU anymore. But the most recent,released a couple weeks ago, is a giant, standalone Squirrel Girl story too big for the regular ongoing. From the regular creators of the monthly title, Ryan North and Erica Henderson, this hardcover is entitled: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe! And boy howdy does she ever.

For those of you who don't know Squirrel Girl from her appearances in Avengers comics, in her own series, or in my reviews, well Squirrel Girl is Doreen Green, college computer programming student and superhero. Along with her friend and roommate  Nancy Whitehead, fellow superheroes Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boi, and her best squirrel pal, Tippy Toe, Squirrel Girl fights crime, but often stops crime without violence by talking and reasoning with her foes. Which isn't to say she can't kick some butt when she wants to. Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is a fun, all-ages series, and this graphic novel provides everything you need to know about Squirrel Girl and her crew is you haven't read anything before, but is full of fun for longtime Squirrel Girl fans.

The core conceit of the graphic novel is a simple one: after winding up in a device created by the High Evolutionary that Tony Stark was puttering around with, Squirrel Girl winds up getting duplicated. The new Squirrel Girl, named Allene (Squirrel Girl's middle name), starts out as the perfect partner for Squirrel Girl, but after a couple days, takes a darker turn as she decides that the world would be better off run by squirrels. And so, while also fighting her better half, Allene decides that she needs to beat up all the other heroes and villains, as they could be a thorn in her side. And since Doreen is the unbeatable Squirrel Girl, you know she's going to win in the end, but she's never had a tougher fight than against her own doppelganger, and there are plenty of twists and turns along the way.

It's hard to review or discuss anything Squirrel Girl without just saying, over and over again, "Its just so much fun!" That's what defines this book, the pure unbridled joy of living in this big crazy superhero world. And even in what is possibly the most dire adventure in Squirrel Girl's series to date, that joy isn't lost. You still get quips, you still get adorable squirrels, and you still get more Marvel Universe Easter Eggs than any book I can remember in recent years. When it says that Squirrel Girl beats up the Marvel Universe, she does it, because there are more characters in here than you can shake a stick at. And not just big names like Iron Man (whose fault this all is), Spider-Man (who has a thing or two to say about clones), and Thor (whose hammer is super important to the story), but characters like Lady Octopus and Mysterion (knock off Spidey villains, unite!) and the newly created Johnny Fishlips, who... has fish lips, I guess. Oh, and Deadpool pops up, and while we all love Deadpool, Deadpool in an all ages sort of story usually wouldn't work, but it does here for a fun little gag. I should point out, though, that Deadpool is a regular presence in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl thanks to Doreen having a full set of "Deadpool's Guide to Supervillains" trading cards, which she uses for background info on various villains, and there are plenty of those in here too.

So, I've talked about the fun and the excitement, but there's another thing that makes Squirrel Girl great, and that's that the character (and the book) has a huge heart. At the end of the book, a supporting character is near death's door, and instead of having a funeral for yet another supporting character in the Marvel Universe, Squirrel Girl gets the collected heroes, who have defeated Allene (I know you might think that's a spoiler, but guess what: the good guys win), to work together to save a life. With tears in her eyes, she says to Iron Man, "We have the best heroes on the planet gathered right here, and you're saying we can't save her? You shut up with that!" And then she talks to the heroes, gets them to work together, and they save a life. Because it's what heroes do. It's a noble, heart-warming moment, and in what feels like an increasingly cynical Marvel Universe, it's a breath of fresh air.

Oh, and two important things I want to point out about reading a Squirrel Girl story by North and Henderson. There is no comic from either of the Big Two out there that is this dense, and I use that phrase in the best possible way. Most comics, I can sit down and breeze through in ten/fifteen minutes, and most original graphic novels or trades in an hour and change. A Squirrel Girl takes twice that, between how packed with dialogue and panels the pages are, and with the little text commentary at the bottom of most pages. And don't even think about skipping that text at the bottom of the pages! It's like the footnotes in a Discworld novel: a lot of the best jokes are down there.

I've talked a lot about story here, but this is a tour-de-force for artist Erica Henderson as much as for Ryan North. Henderson gets to draw everybody in her trademark style, and they all look great. Her pages are exciting and fluid, but never busy, and you can pick over them for ages looking for all the cameos she has in there. I also love how each character looks so different. It's so easy to get away with having a handful of standard faces/bodies in comic book art, but Henderson's characters are all very different and very distinct. And those different faces are all wonderfully emotive, with big eyes and open expressions that help tell the story as much as any word. It's also impressive to note that Henderson not only pencilled and inked (with an ink assist from Tom Fowler) the whole book (except for those Deadpool Villain Cards, those came from series regular colorist Rico Renzi), but she also colored it herself, and did a stellar job of it.

Oh, and before I move on, let me point out that the production backmatter is really enjoyable on this book, and you really should read to the end, even if you're usually the type of reader who isn't into that stuff. Trust me. If you've ever seen a Marvel movie, you know that things can happen after the credits.

Now speaking of Ryan North and fun, I also just finished my umpteenth journey through his choosable-path adventure book, To Be Or Not To Be. For those if us who were children of the 70s and 80s, you might remember this as Choose your Own Adventure (which is a phrase with a copyright, so to quote Groundskeeper Willy, "Shhhh, you wanna get sued?") story. But in this case, it's the story of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, the greatest tragedy ever written, only you get to make the decisions!

Now, I know what many of you are thinking, "Aw, man, Hamlet was such a whiner. I don't want to get into his head." Well, you don't have to! First, you can make Hamlet into a man of action, which is awesome, but there are two other options as well. One you can play as Hamlet Sr., the ghost, who can go attempting to exact ghost vengeance on his crappy brother, Claudius. Or, and I can't recommend this highly enough, you can read through the path as Ophelia. And Ophelia is awesome! She's a scientist, she knows who she is and what she wants, and she's just badass. My favorite path/ending so far has been Ophelia decides that all this noise in Denmark is the pits, and so she goes off on vacation in England where she captures some terrorists and becomes this awesome spy! That's a way better ending than drowning herself!

And if all that isn't enough, there are plenty of one page illustrations that tie in to the endings form some really great comic book artists, including Noelle (Nimona, Lumberjanes) Stevenson, Becky (Demo) Cloonan, Chip (Sex Criminals, Jughead) Zdarsky, John (Bad Machinery, Giant Days) Allison, and a bunch more.

Seriously, folks, I can't recommend To Be Or Not To Be highly enough. I've written before about my love of Shakespeare (I'm going to an event in a week where I get to see an original First Folio and I'm giddy over it), and this is a great way to enjoy the world of Shakespeare even if you're not into him. It's fun, it's fresh, it's hilarious in places. You can follow along with Yorick's skull icons to follow the path of the play, or go off on whatever flights of fancy you can come up with within the book. Seriously, do yourself a favor, and go out and buy this book or get thee to a nunnery!

Both Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe and To Be Or Not To Be are available wherever books are sold, and at may finer comic book stores.

Recommended Reading for 1/8: Hopeless Savages: Break

I first met the Hopeless-Savage family because of a girl. I met her, and we went out on a date to a comic shop, an auspicious beginning to something that wound up not really going anywhere, and as we were browsing, she asked if I had ever read Hopeless Savages, and my response was, "What's Hopeless Savages?" Shocked and appalled, she grabbed the first trade of the series, tossed it onto her stack, and bought it for me so I would read it. The relationship with the girl ended, but my relationship with the Hopeless-Savages continues to this day, and near year's end last year, after a break of about a decade, they're back, and it's like they never left,

For those of you who, once like me, don't know about Hopeless Savages, the comic is published by Oni Press and created by Jen Van Meter, whose praises I have sung before in regards to her work on Dr. Mirage for Valiant. It's the story of the family of two 70s era punk icons, Dirk Hopeless and Nikki Savage, who got out of the scene and decided to raise a family. Their four children, Rat Bastard, Arsenal Fierce, Twitch Strummer, and Skank Zero, as well as the kids' significant others and friends, round out the cast of the book, and it is at its heart a book about family,and what we do for and with those we love.

Break, the new book in the series, takes place a few years after the end of the previous volume. Zero, the youngest of the Hopeless-Savage kids and often narrator of the comics, has gone off to college, and as Spring Break approaches, things aren't too great. Her roommate is uber-sorority pledge girl, she hasn't heard from her boyfriend, Ginger, all semester, and she just needs to get away, and is hoping a two week tour with her friends/her band, the Dusted Bunnies, are what will clear the cobwebs out, so to speak.

The spine of the story is Zero and the Dusted Bunnies'  tour, and the rivalry that brews between them and another band, but there are a series of interludes throughout showing exactly what the rest of the family, as well as Ginger, are up to; Nikki touring again, Dirk going to visit an old bandmate on his deathbed, Rat trying to really find his place in the world, Arsenal and her boyfriend, Claude, dealing with their new twins, and Twitch and his boyfriend, Henry, on a miserable tour playing on an orchestra for an ice show.

While the cast is massive, with all the Hopeless-Savages, plus their significant other, plus the Dusted Bunnies, plus Zero's nemesis band, Minnie Turbine & the Portable Generators, none of the characters get lost in the shuffle. There is even room for other characters to make memorable appearances, like Stink Keane, Dirk's old bandmate who is dying from years of over-doing it on the drugs and partying, and the mysterious professor, Sarasavi Wulliwulli-Filbert, who seemingly miraculously comes to the Dusted Bunnies rescue on a couple of occasions. Doctor WooWoo is one of those side characters who absolutely demands attention every time she pops up on the page, and I hope that we get to see more of her and Zero's relationship in future volumes.

These lively and lifelike characters are what makes Hopeless Savages such an incredible comic, Van Meter has a distinct voice and attitude for each of the family and all their friends, and they each read so distinctly. More than that, she knows how to craft a story that tugs to the heartstrings without ever being maudlin or seeming forced. The story that jumped out at me this volume, that really had me from page one, was Nikki's. Out on tour, she has an accident that breaks her leg, one that will require surgery. But Nikki's a recovering drug addict, so she is afraid what the pain medication required will do, and doesn't want to call Dirk, so instead calls Rat, her eldest. The interaction, as Nikki talks about what she's afraid of, in painful and beautifully written.

The balance between that intensity and the humor that is also deeply a part of Hopeless Savages is maintained perfectly as well. While you have Nikki struggling with her addiction and Dirk dealing with the passing of his friend, Twitch just really wants to get out of his lousy contract, and the only way to do that is to get arrested, and to paraphrase the old show biz aphorism, he can't seem to get arrested in this town. His story intersects with Arsenal's sort of classic, "We're in over our head," parenting story, which is a charming aside from all the intensity of the other plots.

I know I said that Zero's story is the spine of the book, and I've talked about the other plots more than hers, and partially that's because Zero is maybe the farthest from my personal experience now. I'm an old fogy after all, who never toured with my band on an old van. But there's things in her story, about friendship, that are universal. And the stuff going on with the war between the Bunnies and the Generators, both its origins and what is going on behind the scenes, is cleverly laid out by Van Meter, in a way that, when the big reveal happens towards the end of the book, it all makes perfect sense.

There are two artists in this volume, with Meredith McClaren providing the art for the main story, and Christine Norrie on the flashbacks to Dirk and Nikki's punk rock past, McClaren's style is loose and exaggerated, with wild, huge eyes, and a heavy manga influence. Dynamic is the best adjective I have for her style, as every page, ever panel, every character in those panels, seems to be in almost constant motion, which is tricky to do in a medium based on still images. The way she draws music, with the lyrics hovering and moving around the panel took me off guard at first, but as the book progressed, I found it a refreshing way to represent music in comics, one of the medium's few true failings in the hands of many artists. Christine Norrie has been working on Hopeless Savages since the beginning of the series, and her more realistic style contrasts strongly with McClaren's. But because these are flashbacks, the two styles compliment each other, rather than being jarred seeing the same characters at the same time looking so different.

Oh, and one more important aside. Zero speaks in her very own self designed slang, which can be daunting when you start reading it. But if you've ever read A Clockwork Orange, for example, you know that when you're immersed in a new way of speaking, your brain quickly assimilates the new lingo. Starting the book off with Zero just talking to the school therapist allows her to talk for a long enough time that you're able to get into her slang, which is a great insight into her character.

Hopeless Savages is a story about family, music, adventure, and love. It's charming, funny, heartwarming, and has just enough punk rock left to have an edge. After its long hiatus, Break is a great return to the characters, and a perfect place to start if you've never read the book before, and w welcome return for those of us who have,

Hopeless Savages: Break is available at better comic shops everywhere, and easily orderable if your shop doesn't have it. And if you love it, you can pick up Hopeless Savages Greatest Hits Volume 1, which contains all the previous Hopeless Savages story in one volume.