Squirrel Girl



""Maybe it's just me, but I'm not crazy about super hero stories where everything's all dark and moody. Personally, I like the ones where good guys fight giant apes on the moon and stuff. Remember those? I do. That was back when comic book worlds were places you wanted to escape to... not from.""

Doreen Green is the mutant known as Squirrel Girl -- or, depending on who you ask, either The Anti-Life or The Slayer Of All That Breathes. She is also, believe it or not, Marvel Comics' most powerful hero.

Doreen's (official) powers are enhanced strength, speed, agility, and reflexes, as well as the ability to leap several stories. She possesses small razor sharp claws in place of fingernails, and she's able to use small retractable knuckle spikes. She can communicate with squirrels, which she uses to attack and/or distract her enemies (as well as Breaking the Fourth Wall). She also has a semi-prehensile tail (which she can use to cuddle herself with). Oh, and her lips taste like hazelnuts.

According to her official Marvel powergrid, all of Doreen's stats are through the roof, at the same level as the Living Tribunal.

Squirrel Girl first appeared in a one-shot story in 1992 in Anthology Comic Marvel Super-Heroes Special #8 (Winter, 1991); after explaining her powers to Iron Man, she showed her invincibility by defeating both Iron Man and Dr. Doom. The story was written by Will Murray and drawn by Marvel Comics legend Steve freakin' Ditko. Since the art and plot had a Silver Age touch that didn't take itself seriously, and was it published in the Dark Age that marked The Nineties, the story was notable for how out of place it felt.

Few people actually read the story when it first came out, but after scans of the comic were posted on the Internet, Squirrel Girl slowly became an Internet meme. The fact that Dr. Doom was defeated in such a ridiculous manner, combined with the fact that it was one of the few Doom losses that was never retconned as being Actually a Doombot due to the obscurity and ridiculousness of the story, allowed Squirrel Girl to become a popular Memetic Badass in Internet fight threads -- despite having only appeared once in a story that virtually no one had read. She became an Ascended Meme in 2005, when Dan Slott put her on the Great Lakes Avengers in the Great Lakes Avengers: Misassembled mini-series.

Doreen didn't do anything of real importance during said mini-series other than being cute (and a Naive Newcomer) -- in fact, she faced a low point in her superheroine career by being strangled by a E-List Mook (fortunately, that was just a clever Xanatos Gambit on her part). It wasn't until her next appearance in the GLX-Mas Special that her most defining trait became known: in that special, she defeated MODOK, Terrax, and even Thanos himself, while evidence was presented that proved she had already defeated Giganto and Mandarin. Her next appearances, all in various other comics, strengthened her status as an invincible hero by having her defeat Deadpool ("you evil, evil man!"), Bi-Beast, and Pluto. This culminated in the Deadpool/GLI Summer Fun Spectacular, where Dr. Doom was shown as being completely afraid to confront her, even after she infiltrated Latveria on her own. To be fair, only her victories over Doom, Bi-Beast, Deadpool, and M.O.D.O.K. happened on panel; everything else was off panel. (It should also be noted that after the House of M, Squirrel Girl was one of the few hundred mutants confirmed to have not lost their powers after the Scarlet Witch's breakdown.)

After working with the Great Lakes Avengers for a while, Squirrel Girl came to the conclusion that she was actually holding them back from becoming a great team (because they sat around while she defeated the likes of Fin Fang Foom), so in Marvel's Age of Heroes #3, she announced that she was officially leaving the GLA and striking out on her own.

A short two-page item in I Am An Avenger #1 showed Doreen arriving back in New York City, and (as of New Avengers #7) she is an official Avenger by virtue of being hired as the nanny for Luke Cage's and Jessica Jones' baby girl, Danielle. Since Danielle's been the target of supervillain kidnapping, demonic possession, and other threats in the past, someone like Squirrel Girl was probably necessary to protect the toddler.

Squirrel Girl is best characterized as being a Silver Age character being completely out of place in modern comics; she will frequently break the fourth wall to mention this. The fact that she frequently wins against more powerful enemies using ridiculous means can also be seen as a throwback to the Silver Age.

Doreen is not to be confused with fellow squirrel girls Grace T. Sciuridae and Makoto Nanaya.

"I don't need luck. I eat nuts."
 * Action Girl
 * Adorkable
 * And This Is For: Squirrel Girl's letting her squirrels defeat a Mook for Monkey Joe. (He couldn't care less.)
 * Animal-Person: Squirrel Girl is pretty much exactly that (i.e. the squirrel equivalent of a Catgirl).
 * Animal-Themed Superbeing
 * Armed with Canon: In her first appearance, Squirrel Girl defeated Doctor Doom. Another writer showed Doom explaining that it was actually a Doombot. Yet, in GLX-Mas, we are told that she really did defeat Dr. Doom (we are also presented with a new picture, thus hinting that she has defeated Dr. Doom at least twice). And to really hammer in the point, in Deadpool/GLI, Squirrel Girl invades Latveria by herself, and Dr. Doom is afraid to even think about challenging her (with an accommodating statement by Tippy-Toe that since her first victory against Dr. Doom was written in by Steve Ditko, it's fully canon -- "So deal with it, fanboy.")
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: While the evil, evil man fought Daredevil, he warned him about the walking nukes such as the Iron Mans, the Thors, and the Squirrel Girls. And then he fought Cable, he warned him about the psychos such as himself, Dr. Doom and Squirrel Girl. Inverted, since Squirrel Girl really is that dangerous, but averted in that she's a superhero and she rarely causes any sort of collateral damage.
 * Ascended Meme: Squirrel Girl's original one-shot appearance became a meme in Internet forums, which led to her becoming a permanent recurring character in the Marvel universe as part of the Great Lakes Avengers.
 * Attack! Attack! Attack!: She's perfectly capable of delivering cans of ass-whooping like this, as Wolverine can attest. And that's without getting to the animal empathy thing (Wolvie's reasonably wary of the army of squirrels she summons when he manages to get her in an armlock).
 * Badass Adorable / Badass on Paper: She's positively cute (and especially hot when drawn by Mike Deodato in Fear Itself), can talk to squirrels, and can kick more ass than all of Marvel's other heroes combined.
 * Badass Boast: While saying goodbye to Iron Man:

"Dr. Doom: "CONFOUND these wretched rodents! For every one I fling away, a dozen MORE vex me!""
 * Beyond the Impossible, Serial Escalation and Achievements in Ignorance: Each new issue answers one question: how many overpowered super villains can Squirrel Girl defeat? She explains that the actual word impossible isn't part of her personal lexicon, since she feels that the word is very disempowering.
 * Blade Below the Shoulder: While her knuckle spikes aren't as powerful (or as long) as Wolverine's, she's able to carve through solid wood with them.
 * Boring Invincible Hero: The closest she has ever come to defeat was failing to convince Robbie "Penance" Baldwin to return to being Speedball.
 * Unsurprising - you can't pep-talk someone out of a traumatic, partially-drug induced and reinforced psychosis.
 * She has now suffered an actual defeat, albeit as a end of comic gag, at the hands of Danielle Cage the infant daughter of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. The baby temporarily acquired powers like Spider-Man's, and defeated Squirrel Girl by sneaking up behind her and covering her with web until she couldn't move. Nobody tell Doctor Doom!
 * Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Cute. Fuzzy. Talks to squirrels. Lips taste like hazelnuts. Defeated Doctor Doom, The Mandarin, Giganto, MODOK, Thanos, Terrax, Bug-Eyed Voice, Bi-Beast, Deadpool (twice!), Pluto, Fin Fang Foom, Baron Mordo, Korvac, and Ego the Living Planet...
 * She recently handed Wolverine his ass on a silver platter while sparring.
 * Death of a Thousand Cuts: Squirrels vs. Dr. Doom.
 * Did You Just Punch Out Different Cthulhus Several Times, At Least One Of Them Twice?: Self-explanatory.
 * Double Entendre: She carries around nuts for her squirrel friends in 'nut sacks' on her utility belt.
 * Everythings Nuttier With Squirrels: Squirrel Girl is even nuttier than the evil, evil man.
 * Fun Personified: Arguably the flagship character of this trope. Considering the rest of the 616 universe, this is what makes her really out of place.
 * Fastball Special Fuzzball Special!: She threw Tippy-Toe at M.O.D.O.K. this way. Alley-Oop!
 * Greek Chorus: Fourth Wall Observers Monkey Joe and Tippy-Toe (and even Squirrel Girl herself) discuss and use Tropes such as Armed with Canon, Biting the Hand Humor, Digital Piracy Is Evil, Stuffed in The Fridge, and This Loser Is You.
 * Goofy Print Underwear: In one issue of his own comic, the evil, evil man is looking for his Squirrel Girl underwear.
 * Got the Call on Speed Dial: At the age of 14, Squirrel Girl attacked both Dr. Doom and Iron Man in order to become Iron Man's sidekick. As an (assumedly older) teenager in New York, she helped the police by catching muggers in Central Park. Later, she joined the Great Lakes Avengers without giving it a second thought. Her life practically revolves about being a superhero, and she has never once complained about her powers, possibly making her unique in any Marvel universe.
 * Especially considering that she's a mutant, a group traditionally treated like crap on Earth 616. Instead, the media seems to love her.
 * As a correlation Tigra (the other furry girl) is Magical but most people think she is a mutant (with the appropriate reactions), she doesn't correct them. Could Tigra like being counted among the ranks of Squirrel-Girl?
 * Also, do you know why she accepted to become Danielle Cage's nanny? Making ends meet side, she was hoping for a spot with the New Avengers. And she could've gotten it (she came this close from beating the freakin' Wolverine with help of her squirrel buddies!) if Skadi hadn't waged war on America as she was saving a random guy from getting beat up. It turns out she grew so fond of little Dani, her first thought was to rush to Avengers Mansion and guard her. But then those War Machines started bombing the mansion...
 * Heart Is an Awesome Power: Control over squirrels doesn't seem so stupid when they're defeating Dr.Doom.
 * Hypocritical Humor: Squirrel Girl accuses the Bug-Eyed Voice of committing a criminal offense because he is stalking Speedball. She does this while she's occupied in stalking Speedball.
 * Impossible Task Instantly Accomplished: Just ask Thanos.
 * In a Single Bound: She can leap several stories up into the air.
 * Informed Attribute: Her alleged power level. She never actually displays powers beyond increased (but still lower than, say, Spider-Man) strength and agility, along with the ability to control squirrels. She gets an amazing amount of mileage out of the squirrel control, but any villain that can't be beaten by having a small, furry critter wriggle under his armor she beats offscreen (if at all - she hasn't actually appeared that many times or done very much).
 * Ironic Echo Cut: Squirrel Girl's victory over Thanos, who possessed the power to screw the Multiverse.
 * Killer Squirrel
 * Medium Awareness, Breaking the Fourth Wall, and No Fourth Wall: Squirrel Girl is fully aware that she is in a comic book, but due to contractual issues she is only allowed to break the fourth wall during the recaps. However, Monkey Joe and Tippy-Top are not limited by that limitation, so for them there is no fourth wall.
 * Mutants
 * Non-Human Sidekick: Tippy-Toe, and formerly the late Monkey Joe.
 * Noodle Incident: Aside from her various scorecards against prominent villains, New Avengers showed that SG has an unspecified "past" with Wolverine of all people. Exactly what that past involved hasn't been revealed, but the two of them refer to each other by their given first names and Logan reminds her "we promised never to see each other again."
 * Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Most of her victories are off-panel and we only see the results, not the actual fights.
 * Parody Sue: Squirrel Girl is practically the living embodiment of this.
 * Progressively Prettier: In her first appearance, Squirrel Girl looked really weird. Nowadays...well, it depends on the artist, but she's generally depicted as being much, much, much cuter than she looked in her first appearance.
 * She arguably looks her best in Marvel's one-shot Valentine's Day special I ? Marvel: Masked Intentions.
 * Rage Against The Readers: Squirrel Girl after Monkey Joe's death.
 * Reconstruction: What would you call a Silver-Age-appropriate character in the age of Deconstruction?
 * Refuge in Audacity: The main reason she can get away with her Memetic Badass status.
 * Rule of Funny: Probably the only reason she can get away with being so overpowered.
 * Showy Invincible Hero
 * Stalker with a Crush and Stalking Is Love: Squirrel Girl's crush over Speedball, and how. She defeats his enemies for him, she breaks into dungeons for him, she invades sovereign countries for him, she travels through time for him, and her fan letters to him are screened by the FBI! And ignoring that time when he was too deep for her, he has responded to her crush with what's seemingly equal attraction.
 * Super Speed / Super Reflexes: As Squirrel Girl likes to remind us, she has Squirrel Agility. Which means that she has the proportionate speed and reflexes of a squirrel.
 * Take Our Word for It: Every takedown of a top tier villain, except for that first one against Dr. Doom.
 * Take That: A fair bit of Squirrel Girl's dialogue and surrounding plot points consist of these, aimed at whatever the writer finds annoying about pretty much every other comic in existence (the escapism quote above, Batman's in-universe status as an urban legend, etc.). Then, just to make sure no one missed the reference, often one of the squirrels will pop up at the corner of the page and state outright what it meant.
 * Then there was the whole shot at Bleedball Penance. She tries to convince him he's not at fault, citing all the other stuff that other heroes have done that was so much worse (but managed not to get blamed for). Eventually, he cuts her off for not understanding, culminating in him shouting how he's "deep" now and repeatedly smashing his head into a wall to show how "deep" he is. Very subtle.
 * Talks To Squirrels
 * Time Travel: She attempted to travel into the past in order to romance pre-Penance Speedball. But somehow she traveled into the future...
 * It's actually a very sly reference. When Squirrel Girl tries to travel to the past, she sets the time machine to take her to "Speedball's second to last coordinates" (the last time Robbie Baldwin was Speedball prior to the events of Civil War, since if she showed up in Stamford, she'd be one of the victims of Nitro's explosion). Prior to Civil War, Speedball's last appearance in a Marvel comic was in a comic set in the year 2099.
 * It also creates a Crowning Moment of Funny when she goes to Latveria to borrow Dr. Doom's time machine. Doom just sighs and points her to the room, not even bothering to try and stop her.
 * Urban Legend of Zelda: Many fans have been wishing for Doreen to be named as a playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. In response, this doctored screencap began to float around.
 * What Kind Of Lame Power Is Talking To Squirrels Anyway?: Averted hard. If you don't believe me, then look at her track record. She defeated Dr. Doom by letting her squirrels ZergRush him!


 * She defeated M.O.D.O.K by letting Tippy-Toe slip through his defenses. She let The Thing defeat Bi-Beast by having her squirrels distract him. And she was directly aided by Tippy-Toe while breaking into Thunderbolt Mountain. And that's not even getting into her other powers...
 * Xanatos Gambit: She may have been strangled by that E-List Mook during the big brawl in Great Lakes Avengers: Misassembled #4, but that was just to let him stand where she wanted him in order for her to let the other squirrels avenge the murder of Monkey Joe. She could have defeated him herself but it was personal.