Friday 27 January 2017

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Book 2: Squirrel You Know It's True (#5-8)

"Oh my God.  I'm gonna be the one who brings bluetooth to Asgard!" - Nancy

Whew, well it's been a dark old month on this blog, we've had post-apocalyptic raping and pillaging, World War 2 vampires, depression, a reflection in the what it feels to fight the wrong wars and dead mothers. So lets see January out with some more upbeat stuff and what could be more so than the continuing adventures of the endearing superhero, Doreen Green aka Squirrel Girl.  She's a hero with super strength and agility, the ability to talk to squirrels and summon a great number to help her, a bushy tail and a massively positive attitude to life.  In the previous volume she started college studying computing and she and her squirrel companion "Tippy-Toe" moved in with Nancy Whitehead and her pet cat Mew.  Nancy discovered Squirrel Girl's superhero identity and has quickly become a trusted friend.  Squirrel Girl also met and rather clumsily flirted with another student called Tomas before saving the Earth from Galactus by finding him a planet covered in delicious nuts and no sentient life.  Now in this second (and last of this Marvel NOW run) volume we get to meet The Avengers and see her take on an ancient Asgardian villain while getting some help from an unexpected source.  So without further ado lets carry on.

Nancy is trapped in the top of the statue of liberty while Squirrel Girl and a whole bunch of other heroes fighting invading dinosaurs.  She has company and as they sit and wait for rescue conversation turns to favourite superheroes and who might save them.  Nancy says Squirrel will, and one of the group, an old woman says she has a story about Squirrel Girl from when she was a young girl.  Nancy protests that Squirrel Girl isn't old enough but the old lady continues and we get a Kirbyesque looking story.
Zoinks!
Squirrel Girl saves Captain America from the nefarious mind control waves sent out by a Red Skull bot turning Captain America into a Hydra ally.  Preposterous, that could never really happen. Ahem.  Anyway, the Skull bot is disguised as "Bass Lass" and Squirrel Girl stops the mind control waves and unmasks Bass Lass saving the good Captain in the process.  Huzzah, democracy is safe.  The end.

Nancy is somewhat disbelieving of this story and then a younger man says he has a real story about her, that involved clones.  Someone stole her blood and made a clone of her.  The clone took a Red Squirrel theme versus Squirrel Girls grey and they sometimes teamed up and sometimes they fought.  Oh and also Squirrel acquired a costume that was an alien symbiote.  One of the others says to him, "dude, I think you're thinking of Spider-Man" and the man says oh yes, he totally was.

Nancy looks pained as says people don't have to make up stories about her.  But another pipes up saying he has done legit research on her.  He describes the Squirrel Girl Nancy knows well, but then says she's from the future. "What." says Nancy flatly.  He tells an exciting tale of how she came back in time and teamed up with Nick Fury to take down an army of Doom-bots. Squirrel Girl says Doom's weakness is his ego and his Doom-bots will be built to share them.  She uses her robot to search it's database for a way to get to him and finds "a fear of squirrels and the ability to be easily vexed by squirrels."
Many Squirrel Girls appear!
She uses super-telepathy to summon squirrels to attack them, then gets her robot to call in all the Squirrel Girls from other timelines.  Epic battle commences, but Nancy puts an end to the story. She says Squirrel Girl is real, not something she invented so they could pass the time making up stories about her.  The boy says he did research on the internet about her.

Nancy: "I swear, the internet is like 5% true facts, 85% misinformation and 10% local moms with one weird trick that doesn't even friggin' work".

After another couple of interjections, one in the style of Peanuts (which includes a "totally nuts" pun) and the other of The Dark Knight Returns, Nancy has had enough.   She gives a speech about the real Squirrel Girl pointing out the incongruities in their stories.  One of them asks what makes her so sure, "are you, like her roomate or something?"

Nancy denies it then Squirrel Girl pops her head through the window having sorted the dinosaurs out with the other heroes.  "Oh hey Nancy!  How the heck have you been?" she says to a surprised Nancy. Later with the group safely out, Nancy says she hopes being taken hostage isn't going to be a regular thing now she's friends with Squirrel Girl.   Squirrel Girl says she was just in the wrong place in the wrong time. 
Poor Nancy.
As they walk off together, Nancy tells her about the stories going around about her. Squirrel Girl says "it sounds totally nuts!".  The man who first made the pun is delighted, while the others debate whether she is a robot duplicate and the fact you can't see her abs in her "stupid costume".  And that brings the first chapter to a close.

We start the next chapter with Nancy wearing the "suit" of squirrels again.  She says she doesn't think they are helping her fight and when she punches the squirrels move out of the way.  Disappointed Squirrel Girl has this confirmed by Tippy-Toe.  She said she could have told her before as she had the idea to farm out Squirrel Suits to make Nancy "the general of an unstoppable army of Squirrel Scouts??"

They are standing outside the bank that got robbed in volume one.  The suddenly a humanoid hippo appears and he plans to rob it.   In a flurry of terrible hippo puns another hero arrives to help Squirrel Girl defeat "Hippo the Hippo"  Another man jumps in to help as well.  As the newcomer fights Hippo, the first one introduces himself to Squirrel Girl as "Chipmunk Hunk".   She is super pleased when she realises he is another hero who can talk to animals.
Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boi take on Hippo The Hippo.
Incredibly annoyed by the fun they are poking at him Hippo says he never asked to be changed from a hippo in the zoo who was changed into a quasi-human.  He says he has zero education and has to rob banks to pay rent on a place to live that will accomodate his size.  Squirrel Girl agrees with him that it is unfair that he woke up one morning with a bunch of human responsibilities.  Hippo calms down say no one has ever listened to him before, but he is still going to rob the bank.

Squirrel Girl says she can't let him do that, but with his size and strength he should be working for a demolitions company, knocking down buildings for a job.  She tells him to search the internet and he should find something.  Mollified, Hippo leaves, saying he'll give it a go but if it fails he's going to come back and rob the bank.  And he is gone, once again Squirrel Girl solves a problem with her power of helpfulness.

The other hero introduces himself as "Koi Boi" friend to Chipmunk Hunk and similar "protector of the scales of justice".  Nancy almost sighs, and says to Squirrel Girl who she calls Doreen that the two men are only wearing domino masks and takes Chipmunk Hunk's off to reveal Tomas Lara-Perez, from their class.  She says she doesn't know Koi Boi's real name but she's seen him with Tomas in their databases 101 class.  Koi Boi says his name is Ken Shiga, "can we please go somewhere less public to talk about this?"
Nancy is not fooled by the usual disguises.
They go inside and discuss their powers, Ken can talk to fish.  After they leave Nancy grumbles that everyone has superpowers except her.  Squirrel Girl says maybe she does, maybe she can talk to an animal but not know it.  The very next day they will go to the zoo. "And you Nancy Whitehead, are going to chat up every animal there".  Nancy says no chance, but next day they are indeed at the zoo and an embarrassed Nancy, egged on by Squirrel Girl starts shouting at the monkeys, but gets hushed by the monkey keeper. 

Squirrel Girl says they'll try some more animals and as they work their way round the zoo in the lion house their keeper has a heart attack and they escape through the open zoo.  Before Squirrel Girl can spring into action, a humanoid squirrel appears and picks up the lions and tosses them back in their pen.  Later Nancy and Squirrel Girl see a news headline online that "Girl Squirrel" saved the zoo.
"Girl Squirrel" saves the day.
Squirrel Girl tells Nancy she has talked to all the squirrels and none of them know who Girl Squirrel is.  She doesn't trust her, even though Nancy thinks she is just being jealous. "She's up to something" insists Squirrel Girl and she's right.  That night Girl Squirrel starts creeping into peoples bedrooms and speaking into their ears in Squirrel language.  The omniscient narrator translates for us and gets freaked out by the awful things Girl Squirrel is saying to the sleeping people.

In fact they get so upset they quit the comic.  This chapter ends with Girl Squirrel trying to whisper into Nancy's ear but Mew growls at her and sends her packing.  Nancy wakes up just missing her and says to Mew she wishes she could talk, "I gotta met someone named 'Cat Brat'" and kissed her head, bringing chapter two to a close.

The next day Squirrel Girl and Nancy arrive late to their databases class because they broke up several fights on the way there.  The teacher asks her to tell the class what durability is and she answers correctlt much to his annoyance. Then the teacher starts ranting angrily about the sloppiness of students today and one of the students accuses him of selling grades for cash.  A brawl starts up which she, Tomas and Ken try to break up.
Wikipedia knows all.
Later they sit and try and figure out what's going on.  Nancy believes she knows what has happened.  Girl Squirrel is in fact "Ratatoskr"  a being from Norse mythology who provokes people with slanderous gossip according to Wikipedia. 

Squirrel Girl: "Can I just say that it's really satisfying to find out that someone you didn't like for kinda no reason might've been evil all along??"
They debate how they might stop her and Squirrel Girl says to Nancy that they should ask the person who Nancy writes fanfiction about a feline version of - "Cat Thor".  Tomas queries the idea that they are going to walk into Avengers tower just like that.   But off they go, and Squirrel Girl rings the doorbell and is let in.

Inside she introduces them to the Avengers, but Ratotoskr has gotten to them as well.    Squirrel Girl tries to tell them what has happened but gets mocked and ends up knocking them all out.  Thor isn't there, but they phone him up on Captain America's phone.  A quick note, Thor at the moment is in fact a woman because male Thor was judged unworthy of Mjolinir.  He is still fighting with her, but at the moment, she is Thor and he is "Odinson".
Thor and Odinson in the breakfast battle.
Anyway Odinson and Thor are caught up in mass riot at a restaurant between people who like pancakes and those who prefer waffles.  When Squirrel Girl tells him she thinks Ratatoskr is responsible we get a quick history lesson about her.   She was supposed to have been imprisoned because her influence had nearly ended Midgard before. 

Odinson: "This is no mere smack-talking squirrel.  Heed my warning well: Ratatoskr's arsenal includes god-teir smack talking and she wields it readily".

She is the ultimate troll and will ruin humanity and Squirrel Girl alone must stop her. "I kinda thought you might help??" responds Squirrel Girl.  He says that another bears the title of Thor, he doesn't know much about her except the fact, "she kisses well".

Squirrel Girl and the others travel to his and Thor's location where they have finally calmed things by tieing everyone up. Thor says they must go to Asgard and restore the barriers which are supposed to hold Ratatoskr.   They decide to split up, Nancy and Tippy-Toe will go to Asgard with Thor and Odinson to fill them in on what Ratatoskr is like now and Squirrel Girl, Tomas and Ken will stay on Earth to fight Ratatoskr. And off Nancy goes.

Later Squirrel Girl, Tomas and Ken find Ratatoskr.  Ratatoskr denies being Ratatoskr asking them what she has supposed to have done, "do I visit their homes in a single night like some demented Santa Claus, using my special talents to inject messages in their brains, messages that I'm sustaining still, even as we speak?"  Squirrel Girl says she is saying that sarcastically but actually that sounds exactly like what's been going on.
Ratatoskr's true form.
So Ratatoskr drops the innocent act and transforms into a sinister and vicious looking black Squirrel.   Squirrel Girl and Chipmunk Hunk order the squirrels and chipmunks to attack. But Ratatoskr is able to stop them with her evil words much to Squirrel Girl's anger, "Ratatoskr, you are a vile, vile Squirrel".  Ratatoskr says she is just ending the world to make room for something better and knocks Squirrel Girl and the others down with a swipe of her hand.

The next chapter starts with a page of Nancy's pencil drawn comic showing Cat-Thor versus the Frost Giant Schnauzers.  Then we join her, Tippy-Toe, Thor and Odinson arrving in Asgard.   Nancy shows them "the great seer Wikipedia" and its information on Rataoskr.  Thor reads it and says that it says if they donated now his fundraiser would be over in an hour. "Yeah he does that" says Nancy.

The information is valuable, but they can't figure out how she escaped in the first place.   Her prison was forged by Odin himself and the only way out would be through Asgardian manipulation and they don't know of an Asgardian who would do that. Then Loki appears and laconically says it might be his fault.  The others stare at him.  "What?!  I said 'my bad'" he protests.

Back with Squirrel Girl, Tomas and Ken, Ratatoskr has hold of the two men and mind controls them into attacking Squirrel Girl.   Fortunately Squirrel Girl swiped Spider-Man's web shooters when she knocked out the Avengers and is able to stop Tomas and Ken without hurting them.  She fires a tonne of web fluid at Ratatoskr and wraps her in the webbing.  But she uses her mind control to get a crowd of people to pul the webbing off her and Tomas and Ken get free too.
*laughs helplessly*
Back in Asgard, Nancy tells Loki she's a big fan. He asks her to name her favourite celebrity and he'll shape-shift into them. Odinson says they have no time for this frivolity but Nancy quickly says Cat-Thor.  Loki shifts into Thor with a cat's head saying "Nancy Whitehead - where have you been all my life?"

Irritated Odison asks Loki how he was responsible for Ratatoskr's escape.   He says he had many schemes on the go and some took centuries to ripen:

Loki: "And when a fella has so many irons in the fire, it's clear even the most harshest judges of character must forgive him for forgetting one teeny, weeny, tiney, winey little scheme. And therefore in conclusion, that's how come it's not my fault Ratatoskr escaped."

Loki says he doesn't want Midgard destroyed so he'll help them out, but they won't be able to get close to her without her using her powers against them.  Nancy has an idea though.  They can block their ears and use bluetooth to communicate with each other.

Back on Earth, Ratatoskr has Squirrel Girl being held by several people including Tomas and Ken. Ratatoskr says they are loving this because part of them resent Squirrel Girl for being "superior".  Squirrel Girl says using mind control doesn't count, "the real Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boi wouldn't do this."  Ratatoskr is about to whisper in Squirrel Girl's ear when Nancy, Tippy-Toe, Thor, Odinson and Lokui appear.
But inspirational speeches should always work!
Nancy hurls Tippy-Toe at Squirrel Girl who puts earplugs in her ear.  Loki uses "Mewnir" to free Squirrel Girl and knock Ratatoskr away from her.  Then Thor uses Mjolnir to temporarily take out Ratatoskr. But Squirrel Girl says they need to break her spell on everyone.   Loki provides her with a megaphone and Squirrel Girl gives an inspiring speech to the bewitched crowd.  Unfortunately it doesn't work and the crowd starts to attack.

Then suddenly Ratatoskr is engulfed in rainbow light and disappears. The crowd stops attacking and mills about wondering how they got there. Loki says he saved the day.  Squirrel Girl's speech did work, Ratatoskr had to direct her attention to reinforcing her mind control and took her attention away from the "Bifrost blocker she had going".  Loki noticed and sent down the Bifrost and now Ratatoskr is back in prison in Asgard and Midgard is saved.

He has returned his head to normal for which Odinson is grateful.  Loki says those who were mind controlled will feel way more jealous than normal for afew day but will be OK. "We did it.  We did it!" grins Nancy.  Afew days later Squirrel Girl, Nancy, Tomas and Ken are hanging out and Tippy-Toe is teaching them how to speak squirrel. Squirrel Girl says if they keep up this level of progress they'll be "unbeatable."
All friends together again.
And that brings the series to an end.  But thankfully the series is not cancelled, after the 2015 universal Marvel reboot, everything is started from number one again.  And Squirrel Girl is back, with the same creative team and the same characters which is great because Nancy is definitely one of my favourite supporting characters in comics right now.  The Cat-Thor stuff had me genuinely having to put the comic down and compose myself I laughed so much.  This is a wonderful comic, Ryan North and Erica Henderson have bought us a fantastic series full of fun where brute force is never the answer and being clever and kind is the way to solve problems.  The final page comes after the letters page and shows Ratatoskr back in her prison being trolled by Loki who has sent her a talking Squirrel Girl doll who says she is updating Ratatoskr wikipedia page to say she is a big baby and Ratatoskr bites its head off in anger which shows Loki remains king of trolls.  There is also a couple of Squirrel Girl stories from prior to this series included in the trade.  But the artwork shows Squirrel Girl as a more traditional looking "sexy" superheroine and lacks the charm of Erica Henderson's more cartoony rendering of her.  I'm so pleased this series has not been cancelled and I shall be following it as it gets released in trades as long as it keeps up these high standards of art and writing. Awesome stuff.

19 comments:

  1. The thing with Cat-Thor... If you check the recap pages (if those are included in the collection you totally should) Nancy's "Twitter" icon is Mew dressed as Thor since the beginning.

    Yeah. Nancy's superpower is common sense. :D

    Also you really should see the one issue Squirrel Girl guest appearance in All-New Wolverine (I think issue #7), where she drops by holding a wolverine because "she (Laura/Wolverine) might want an animal's perspective" on the case. This leads to a joke about the difference between "talking to animals" and "understanding animals".

    ...It also leads to the Wolverines (Laura, and her clone Gaby) having a pet wolverine (Jonathan). :3

    "he doesn't know much about her except the fact, "she kisses well"."

    That's a nod towards the pre-Secret Wars Thor series she first appeared in. (I've opinions on Jason Aaron's Thor, but I rather not rant here and now. ^^;) Thor Odinson suspected Freyja as the new Thor so she kissed him to prove she isn't his mother.

    There is also a footnote somewhere in this (webcomic writer does alttext even in print comics!) advising people not to read "Loki: Agent of Asgard" if they want the good feeling about Thor (Odinson) and Loki to last...

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  2. It was only about 10 years ago I found out grey squirrels weren't just old red squirrels.

    But moving on, I like how they've rhymed squirrel with girl on the cover. That's my preferred pronounciation. Did you know that during WW2 asking people to pronounce squirrel was a test for rooting out German infiltrators? I have tried this with some Gemran friends though and they can say it just fine. (They do have trouble with "Can you tell me the way to Jarvis Cross?" though).

    I'm really growing to live this series. I'm also feeling a bit proud of myself that I'm starting to pick up on references to other superhero stories. Well, I'm hoping that's what I'm doing. I'm guessing the bit about all the tall tales is from that Batman story where all the villains are together and do something similar about Batman? And is the squirrel suit thing a reference to Iron Man?

    Sometimes 'Meta' can be a bit annoying and self congratulatory. Like a shibboleth to exclude the uninitiated. Really works here though. It's very 'celebratory' of comics culture and history. I really like it when they do the artwork styles from particular time periods. And the Kirbyesque look really fits in here. Although very modern this story also seems to reflect very well that era when comics were just entertaining and fun.

    Glad someone else keeps getting the ads from that local woman. I think I've figured out "Newquay housewife's" weight loss secret though. It's using different people in the before and after photographs. I'm not surprised "doctors were shocked" when they found out.

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  3. Squirrel Girl collection titles (and the OGN) without comment:

    - The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 1: Squirrel Power
    - The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 2: Squirrel You Know It's True
    - The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now
    - The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 4: I Kissed a Squirrel and I Liked It
    - The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe
    - The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 5: Like I'm the Only Squirrel in the World

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  4. Ha, I love this even more now. Those are brilliant.

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  5. @Malitia: Thanks for all the brilliant information, glad I have plenty more collections to come. Downside of using songs though, whenever I picked this up to read and write about it I had the awful Milli Vanilli song stuck in my head, GAH!

    I did wonder about the comment of Thor's about her not being his mother, so good to know what was behind that. The guest appearence in Wolverine sounds interesting, I've been curious about the new Wolverine so may have to check it out.

    Also I completely forgot to include it in both posts I have done on the series but the twitter recaps are included in the collections and so is the impossible to read alt text at the bottom (I may need glasses). I must scan one of them in when I cover the next collection because Squirrel Girl's trolling of Tony Stark is hilarious as is the concept of Hulk tweeting. I hadn't noticed Nancy's Cat Thor icon, but I have now. She is great :D

    @Alan: I did know about the testing of German infiltrators with pronoucing squirrel. But really, if you know any Americans with a reasonably heavy accent they tend to slur it into "squirrl" as well. So maybe Germans would have been better off pretending to be American.

    The tall tales chapter is very reminiscent of "Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader" (writer Neil Gaimen, artists various) which is probably what you are thinking of.

    I wanted to scan in more of the different art styles used but I try and space the images out a bit, it's difficult when a comic is this good to pick a page or panel or set of panels out. I do like the fact that comics can have a space where you can get deeply moving meditations on war and duty on one shelf and an exhuberent and thoroughly modern series that remembers comics can be fun as well on another. I've scheduled some mainly lighter fare for next month anyway.

    I've stopped getting ads for the local woman who knows one weird trick, but I keep getting ones that promise a shot of someone popping a tit out accidentally. Which is worse!

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  6. "HULK TWEET!!!"

    I like unexpected social media things. There's a nice bit in that 'Blitz' film when the baddie gets arrested:

    "I want a solicitor, a sandwich and I need to update my Facebook status"

    I'm now getting ads for fitness singles and cheap funeral services. Presumably I'm going to meet someone nice at the gym, then keel over.

    Which came first, Milli Vanilli or the Movellans in Dr Who?

    Comics can be a wonderfully broad medium. Everything from Minnie the Minx to Maus via Moebius. I'm loving the way this pitches everything just right though. It's charmingly silly but fundamentally very clever. It reminds me of how none of the Viz competitors ever really 'got it'. Whimsical isn't the same as stupid. You have to work hard to make stuff like this work. Like how the hardest acting job is farce.

    (You can probably translate what I'm trying to say there into English)

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  7. @varalys:

    Wait until the duck and cat tweeting. :D

    @Alan:

    "I like unexpected social media things."

    Well, then you would probably like at least some parts of Gillen's Young Avengers. I mean the Tumblr (Yamblr) recap pages, and the "stuff happens off-panel" summaries in Instagram like social media site communication (with much *smooch* and trolling by Loki).

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  8. I've always quite liked 'commentary' type things in media. Like fake marginal notes or editor's comments. Especially when they're suitably snarky. There used to be a spoof newspaper called 'The Framley Examiner'. Theyd do stuff that looked like production notes had slipped through. Like blank columns saying "Put some stuff here". That took on a new level of funny when I started doing work for a real paper and that would literally have holding notes like "Write five paragraphs about Beyonce or somebody". They usually didn't get left in though.

    But social media and the like offers so many great opportunities. I love the sound of the stuff you've referenced. And there is something particularly charming about unlikely characters having social media accounts. No reason why they wouldn't of course. Horrible Histories has some fun with things like Caligula's Facebook updates.

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  9. @Alan: yeah I remember those Viz clones and even bought a few for a while. They were pretty bad, Oink was the best Viz-alike and because it was aimed at kids much cleverer in its humour (also we always put on the top of our Xmas tree a paper Tom Thug as a fairy that was cut out from an Xmas special. He's been crowning our tree for 30 years now!)

    I do get what you say about comedy. When I worked in the theatre it was obvious that panto was the hardest work actors have to do if you're going to appeal to every one from 8 to 80 year olds.

    @Malitia: Daaaaaamn, I am trying to stagger my purchases but you are tempting me to go onto Amazon and buy all the rest of the collections at once. Must. Resist.

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  10. As for guest appearances and cameos... I would have also mentioned the Old Lady Squirrel Girl one from the Unbelievable Gwenpool... but:

    1) You don't know, who that is yet. (The 3rd collection has answers! If I remember correctly...)

    2) I'm not entirely comfortable with recommending Gwenpool... mostly because ableist language (other characters tend to assume that Gwen is "crazy") and because there is meta and there is Gwenpool, who even writes her own editor's notes. ^^;

    ...

    Also aggressively pink.

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  11. I'd heard of Spider-Gwen, but not Gwenpool! As a note I don't tend to mind ablist language too much and I am a "crazy" person myself, but I do try to be more aware of it now in my write-ups. Gwenpool sounds intriguing though, as DC has let me down so much with the end of the DCYou and with it most of the LGBTQ characters series I intending to seek out more Marvel stuff now who are do sterling work with women characters. I was browsing my mum Guardian Guide the other week and it had a big article on comics recommending the new Ant-Woman one, which looks pretty cool artwise at least.

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  12. Gwenpool... OK. So there was Spider-Gwen so Marvel did a variant cover month of "Gwen Stacy as all the superheroes!". One of these was Gwenpool which was apparently liked very much by cosplayers... So Marvel handed the name (Gwenpool) and design to Christopher Hastings (he committed the Adventures of Doctor McNinja webcomic) with "keep these, everything else is up to you". Well, he created a story about a comicbook nerd getting into the world of the comics... it's mostly what TVTropes calls a Deconstructive Parody.

    Ant-Woman? O.o The Unstoppable Wasp? I don't have much of an opinion on it yet as only the first issue came out. But I so hope against all odds that someone will fix her mom's name eventually.

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  13. Yes, I had a brain fart and meant The Wasp. Bibble. Well I'd be interested in seeing how it goes, so if it is worth picking up as a trade I'd be interested in your opinion once it has a few more issues under it's belt.

    I must sat Gwenpool sounds very interesting, I'm a big fan of meta and deconstructive parody etc. So that's another series to keep an eye out for. My poor bank account ;_;

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  14. Ants evolved from wasps, so it's a perfectly understandable mix up.

    I am finding your discussion and very enlightening. Im intrigued by the tropes/meta thing. How real life and fiction are feeding into each other. So comics become very self aware and politics ends up being memes and guy fawkes masks.

    Lots to ponder.

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  15. I studied postmodernism a lot when I did my Bachelors so I have quite a high tolerance for meta and fourth wall breaking. Grant Morrison is probaly king of that sort of thing.

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  16. I watched that Future Shock documentary again the other night. Lots of Morriston in that of course.

    As to meta etc, why is it seen as a post modern thing? Asides to the audience date back at least to Greek theatre and it's like the key thing in Jacobean plays. Heck, one of the reasons we believe 12th Night was written specifically for a performance at Middle Temple is it's full of meta references to the place.

    Nowt new under the sun Horatio.

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  17. Postmodernism is an insanely complex theory to sum up in a few words. It's not just a text that is aware it'sa text but also a text that relies on it's meaning from the texts it links to and references, by understanding the web of meaning it lives in you understand it itself. It makes it an incredibly useful theoretical tool for analysing music video and adverts in that respect because trad lit. theory struggles in those cases.

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  18. There's some scene in something (that's bugging me trying to remember) where someone asks something like "You want me to sum up one of the most complex issues every contemplated by mankind in one sentence?"

    "If you wouldn't mind, yeah"

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