Squirrel Girl

• 1. Introduction

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  Squirrel Girl, whose real name is Doreen Allene Green, bursts out of a forest at Iron Man in her very first comic book story. She is 14 years old, she carries a pet squirrel named Monkey Joe, and she hopes to become his sidekick. Instead she teams up with him, and when he is captured she defeats Doctor Doom with the help of a horde of squirrels. Iron Man tells her she is too young to fight crime, but promises to put in a good word with the Avengers when she is older. That story appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes Winter Special, cover-dated Winter 1991. It looked like a one-off curiosity. Why would anyone create a hero like this when comics were growing grim? Why did Marvel nearly forget her for a decade? And how did a running joke about her impossible victories turn her into a star?

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• 2. A Lighter Idea

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  Writer Will Murray wanted to tell lighthearted stories at a time when mainstream comics were dominated by heavy drama. Squirrel Girl was his answer. He wrote her debut, titled "The Coming of... Squirrel Girl," as a script with no artist attached. Tom Morgan was originally going to draw it, but when Morgan dropped out, Murray asked for Steve Ditko and got him. Murray later said, "Ditko did a great job in bringing my baby to life." He also credited the artist with a detail that was missing from the script: "He invented that knuckle spike."

  Murray has described two sources for the idea. One was a long-ago girlfriend who read comics and loved wild animals of every kind. She also happened to be a big Ditko fan. The other was much closer to home. Murray remembered "a bunch of squirrels running around my roof," some of which wandered in through his open bedroom window.

  The warmth did not last inside Marvel. Murray pitched a follow-up story in which Squirrel Girl tries to join the Fantastic Four, and it was turned down. Marvel admitted that the character was cool. Still, Murray was told that she did not feel like a Marvel character and that the company most likely would not use her again. For a long time, that prediction held.

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• 3. The Long Wait

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  A single panel in Marvel Year-In-Review '92 gave Squirrel Girl her next appearance, and it was a joke at her expense. The book satirized Marvel itself. In its 2099 section, it listed Squirrel Girl: 2099 among the 2099 books the company had pretty much ruled out. A later plan to add her to the New Warriors collapsed when writer Fabian Nicieza left Marvel. In 1997, Fleer-Skybox released Marvel Superheroes trading cards, and one of them showed a more sexualized version of the character.

  Her only mention in comics during those years came in Deadpool #7. Blind Al, Deadpool's friend, maid, mother figure and prisoner, says she accidentally put bleach in with his Squirrel Girl Underoos. Then nearly a decade passed.

  The revival came in 2005 from writer Dan Slott, who wrote a four-issue miniseries for the Great Lakes Avengers. That team was created in 1989 and was made up of enthusiastic heroes with bizarre and nearly useless abilities. In 16 years they had appeared only a handful of times, mostly as comic relief. Slott changed the roster and brought Squirrel Girl aboard.

  The miniseries satirized comic book deaths by announcing that a team member would die in every issue. Squirrel Girl made a fuss to ensure that Monkey Joe would be an official member, and in the third issue he was killed. Enraged, she showed the real extent of her power by defeating the villain Maelstrom with an army of squirrels. The only squirrel in that army to survive became her new companion, and she named her Tippy-Toe.

  Slott kept writing the team, including the Christmas-themed GLX-Mas Special. During 2006's Civil War story, the team fought Deadpool in Cable & Deadpool #30. In September 2010, a story called "Welcome Home Squirrel Girl" simply brought her back to Manhattan. From issue #7 in February 2011 to the final issue #34 in January 2013, the New Avengers series used her as a supporting character. She worked as a nanny for the daughter of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones while attending New York University. Marvel had still not given her a book of her own.

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• 4. The Unbeatable Series

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  On the 6th of October 2014, Marvel announced that Squirrel Girl would star in her own series for the first time. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was written by Ryan North and drawn by Erica Henderson, and its first issue arrived on the 7th of January 2015. The title winked at her history of defeating villains far above her weight. The series gave that history a twist. She was unbeatable because she always looked for non-violent solutions, befriending villains and helping them turn their lives around.

  The first run lasted eight issues. In October 2015, the series was rebooted under the All-New, All-Different Marvel branding, with Squirrel Girl a member of the New Avengers. The monthly book continued until November 2019, for a total of 58 issues. Derek Charm took over the art in May 2018. Starting in 2017, she also appeared in U.S.Avengers, which replaced The New Avengers.

  Strong trade sales at school book fairs encouraged the team to make an original graphic novel. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe was released in October 2016. Henderson told The Hollywood Reporter that balancing the graphic novel and the monthly series was almost too much work. North called another graphic novel a fun challenge.

  The story kept spreading to new formats. In April 2022, Marvel Entertainment and Sirius XM launched a six-episode podcast, Marvel's Squirrel Girl: The Unbeatable Radio Show, as a direct continuation of the comic. North wrote it, Giovanna Sardelli directed it, and Milana Vayntrub starred as Squirrel Girl. North also wrote a vertical comic tie-in for Marvel Unlimited. A Webtoon adaptation of the comic followed in January 2026.

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• 5. Squirrel Powers and Gear

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  At the age of 10, Doreen Green discovered that she could talk to squirrels. She was born in Canada to Dorian and Maureen Green. A doctor determined that she was not a mutant, although she believed otherwise for a long time. Her genes had been modified for unknown reasons, and the most visible result was a prehensile tail.

  During her debut, she gave Iron Man a full demonstration. Her furry tail is roughly 3-4 feet long, and her buck teeth are strong enough to chew through wood. Her superhuman strength and agility let her jump easily between trees. Sharp claws help her climb, and she has retractable knuckle spikes roughly 2-3 inches long on each hand. She understands squirrels but does not speak to them telepathically, and squirrels have been shown understanding her English.

  Later stories added more. She calls her heightened reflexes "squirrelgility," her eyes glow red in low light, and her sense of smell is sharp. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl gave her a bite of one million and eighty-five thousand pounds of pressure, enough to chew through solid steel. She can also take down Wolverine in a fight with no claws. The same series settled her status. Her powers come from an unspecified "something" in her RNA or DNA, and she is "medically and legally distinct from being a mutant."

  Her utility belt holds pouches of nuts for her squirrel friends, humorously called her "nut sacks." She once carried "Iron Man Vs. Series" battle cards to explain to Dum Dum Dugan how she knew him. She gave him a defense stat of 8 and herself a 6, and the printing on the cards was gibberish. In her solo series she uses legible "Deadpool's guide to Super Villains" cards, which mix useful facts with jokes about her opponents.

  Squirrels are always nearby. In Great Lakes Avengers #4 she named several, including Slippy Pete, Mr. Freckle and Nutso, who are presumed dead after being pulled into a singularity. She also flies a small gyrocopter called the Squirrel-A-Gig, a gift from teammate Big Bertha. She once used it to fly through the anti-aircraft defenses of Castle Doom.

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• 6. Unlikely Victories

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  One of the best-known Squirrel Girl victories happens in Central Park, where the Thing is fighting the two-headed villain Bi-Beast. Squirrel Girl, visiting her squirrel friends, tells them to fetch the smelliest garbage they can find and scatter it around the fighters. Everyone has to hold their noses. Bi-Beast has two noses and needs both hands to cover them, which leaves him defenseless. The Thing knocks him out.

  That is the pattern behind a long-running joke. After she beat Doctor Doom, writers kept having her defeat much stronger villains, usually off-panel. Slott's stories added MODOK, the Mandarin and Thanos to the list, mostly in comedically unexplained ways. Some fights, including those against Deadpool, MODOK and Wolverine, are shown on the page. Her wins tend to come from an opponent's overconfidence, weakness from an earlier fight, or a creative use of her powers.

  The Thanos victory is ambiguous. Uatu the Watcher was present and claimed that she beat the genuine Thanos, not a copy. The same writer soon wrote another story in which Thanos claimed to have perfected clones that could fool even the most cosmic of beings. The reveal also comes from a clone whose memory had been altered.

  Her encounter with Galactus is different. After learning that he was heading to Earth to devour it, she stole Iron Man's armor and flew to the Moon with Tippy-Toe. On the way, Whiplash attacked her, mistaking her for Iron Man. She tried to harm Galactus at first, but she and Tippy-Toe ended up befriending him. They told him of a planet rich in nuts and devoid of intelligent life that could sustain him even better than Earth. Galactus later returned the favor by using his powers to save her life.

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• 7. Campus Life

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  Empire State University is where Doreen begins college, majoring in computer science, and her first day there involves a fight with Kraven the Hunter. He is lashing out at local squirrels, including Tippy-Toe, whom he has caught and is about to kill. Doreen stops him by telling him about sea monsters like Giganto and challenging him to hunt them. Her roommate Nancy Whitehead soon figures out that Doreen is a superhero, promises not to tell anyone, and becomes her close friend.

  The supporting cast grows quickly. While Doreen is stopping Hippo from robbing a bank, she meets Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boi, who can speak to different animals. Nancy recognizes Tomas Lara-Perez and Ken Shiga under their masks right away. The group later faces Ratatoskr, an Asgardian squirrel god who causes mayhem by trash-talking the city's citizens while they sleep. Loki and both the current and former Thor help defeat her.

  Other villains are talked into changing. Brain Drain, whose technology is outdated and badly designed, is easily defeated. Doreen and Nancy realize that his programming never gave him a choice, so they update him. He then enrolls at the university to take computer science courses. The Mole Man proposes to Doreen on the spot after she apologizes to him and they talk. She escapes his schemes by letting his admirer Tricephalous defeat her.

  The stories also turn strange. A classmate named Cody sends Doreen and her classmates back to the 1960s to improve his grade. Doreen beats a past Doctor Doom by using Cody's time machine again and again to send herself a day before the fight. The resulting small army of Squirrel Girls swarms him until he gives up. In another story, a clone named Allene, who lacks Doreen's restraint and empathy, banishes Doreen to the Moon. There a dying Doreen summons Thor's hammer Mjolnir and becomes Squirrel Thor. Allene finally exiles herself and her squirrel army to the Negative Zone, which they turn into a utopia called Squirreltopia 5000.

  The villain Melissa Morbeck later leaks Doreen's secret identity to the public. Doreen briefly retires from heroism and hosts an AM call-in show, "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Radio Show," where she answers questions about life as a superhero. Tippy-Toe, Nancy, Koi Boi, Chipmunk Hunk and Brain Drain join her.

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• 8. Reception and Reach

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  "Right now, the hottest superhero in the Marvel Comics universe is not male, does not wear a cape and was not bitten by a radioactive spider." That is how John Kelly of The Washington Post described the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, adding that she has a tail, an overbite and acorn earrings. Writer Brian Michael Bendis said that her popularity among writers helped drive the unanimous decision to use her as the nanny in New Avengers. When he announced the character at the 2010 Comic-Con panel, he said the applause went on so long that the place went nuts. He compared it to the reception Stan Lee gets when he walks into a room.

  Critics have kept ranking her. Chase Magnett of ComicBook.com placed her 6th on a list of the greatest Steve Ditko characters. He wrote that everything great about her was present from the start. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw of The Daily Dot ranked her 13th on a list of the top 33 female superheroes of all time. Will Murray, meanwhile, has joked that it is time she met her match in "The Ultimate Pistachio."

  Alternate versions exist too. Moon Squirrel is a fusion of Squirrel Girl and Moon Girl, created by the Infinity Gems. A zombified Squirrel Girl turns up in the Marvel Zombies specials, along with her Squirrel-A-Gig.

  Outside comics, she first appeared on television in the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes episode "The Cure," voiced by Rebecca Shoichet. She auditions to replace Ben Grimm and is rejected immediately. Misty Lee voiced her in Ultimate Spider-Man, and Milana Vayntrub voices her in Marvel Rising as the best friend of Ms. Marvel. A New Warriors series with Vayntrub in the role was cancelled during production. Emma Berman voices her in Spidey and His Amazing Friends.

  She is also a playable character in many video games, including Lego Marvel Super Heroes with Tara Strong and Marvel Rivals with Vayntrub. Shannon and Dean Hale wrote young adult novels about her, and Alyssa Buckner played her in a stage play called Squirrel Girl Goes to College.

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