SQUIRREL GIRL: Page 5 of 5

Publication Date: 2nd Dec 2021
Written By: Monolith.
Image Work: Douglas Mangum.
Biography

BIOGRAPHY - page 5

One day, Doreen and Nancy got to talking about Kraven, and decided to actively pursue a friendship with the Hunter to help keep him on his new path. They called Kraven and got the gang together to try an Escape Room one afternoon. However, the Escape Room became less whimsical and more deadly when it was revealed Mojo II: The Sequel was running the facilities. Death traps aside, it proved to be a fun afternoon with friends, which Kraven appreciated. The day turned sour when Kraven was recognized by the police outside the Escape Room. Squirrel Girl tried to speak in his defense, but Kraven had a half-dozen outstanding warrants for past crimes. Doreen and the others stood by him, but were arrested as co-conspirators. [Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2nd series) #32-33]

While in custody, Squirrel Girl struggled to maintain her optimism and faith when confronted with the magnitude of Kraven’s crimes. It was one thing to believe in the idea of redemption, but another when forced to accept that her Escape Room buddy had also once buried Spider-Man alive. However, Brain Drain (former Hydra-aligned Nazi, current nihilist super-hero) stepped forward to laud his own redemption thanks to Squirrel Girl, and asked her to continue supporting Kraven. They hired She-Hulk for their defense but, while Jen Walters got Doreen and the rest of her friends off for resisting arrest and the related charges, Kraven was deemed irredeemable under a court of law and set to spend life behind bars. Kraven could no longer tolerate being trapped and broke his bonds. With an apology to Squirrel Girl, he fled the courthouse. [Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2nd series) #34]

Kraven had the misfortune of running into Spider-Man as he escaped custody. Squirrel Girl caught up to them and once more put herself in harm’s way to defend Kraven’s efforts to change. Doreen and her friends together convinced Spider-Man, just this once, to look the other way on Kraven’s behalf. Squirrel Girl was eager to recruit Kraven as a new member of the Justice Pals then and there, but Sergei declined. While Kraven intended to continue his path of redemption, it was clear to him he had a ways to go and could not achieve it in New York, where he was so tempted to fall back into old habits. Doreen accepted this was for the best, and wished Kraven well on his journeys, both physical and metaphorical. [Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2nd series) #35]

In her next adventure, Squirrel Girl fought alongside the Avengers against the marauding Octobliterator. Squirrel Girl bravely sacrificed her life to protect civilians from the killer calamari. No one was more shocked by the death of Squirrel Girl than Doreen Green, who read about it in the paper the next day. Curious what the scam was, Doreen and Nancy attended the funeral for Squirrel Girl disguised as Bass Lass and Fish Miss, but saw no signs of who the imposter was. They deduced the culprit might be a Skrull and contacted Tony, only for Tony to be replaced by the Skrull after they left. After rescuing the kidnapped Tony, though, they learned the Skrull was named G’illian, a refugee who refused to fight in the last Skrull invasion and was seeking sanctuary on Earth. Doreen and her friends convinced Tony to trust a Skrull and help G’illian build a peaceful life on Earth. [Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2nd series) #37-40]

Squirrel Girl found herself in a complicated temporal battle with Kang the Conqueror on multiple fronts. Decades in the future, Kang foresaw his imminent defeat in the timestreams by Old Lady Squirrel Girl. To prevent this, he used his mastery of time travel to confront her on a battlefield he had pre-engineered with traps to ensure his victory. When his final trap failed, Kang traveled back to the present and found 20-something Doreen had stumbled across the building he rigged to fall on Old Doreen and fixed it up decades earlier, nullifying his final victory. An angered Kang set up new temporal booby traps to eliminate Doreen in the present, but again his final trap failed. Traveling back in time yet again, Kang found 10-year-old Doreen, on a vacation to New York, fixing his sabotage work in the sewers. Young Doreen smashed Kang’s time machine remote, but Kang simply reversed its destruction and reassembled the device. That glance at the inner workings of the time machine was all Doreen needed to (decades later) finish her own time machine and return to the past to confront Kang. Young Doreen, Squirrel Girl and Old Lady Squirrel Girl triple-teamed the conqueror and sent him packing. [Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2nd series) #42]

Doreen and her friends were visiting Allene in the Negative Zone when an unknown force called Squirrel Girl back to Manhattan. She was met by Loki at the onset of the War of the Realms, as the forces of Malekith invaded all of Earth. Loki was relieved Nancy Whitehead was safely away from Earth, and asked Doreen to help fight back against the invaders by targeting a hidden Frost Giant base up in Canada. Doreen agreed, and Loki teleported her to her parents’ house so she could suit up for battle. On her way to her target, though, Squirrel Girl was met by Ratatoskr, who had escaped Asgardian custody in the chaos leading up to the invasion. It was Ratatoskr who brought her back from the Negative Zone. As God of Chaos, Ratatoskr believed Malekith’s conquest of all the realms would lead to stagnation and uniformity, which she was entirely against, so she wanted to help Squirrel Girl fight the Frost Giants.

Squirrel Girl was VERY reluctant to team-up with Ratatoskr, and put a series of conditions on their partnership like No Killing, No Mind Control and No Inevitably Betraying Her. Still, it was a turbulent partnership when “Rachel Oskar” (Ratatoskr’s new human identity) started a fight in a local town when she and Doreen were looking for the exact location of the Frost Giant base. Doreen realized Rachel was LITERALLY just there to fight Frost Giants – she had no intentions of saving the Earth. Squirrel Girl and Ratatoskr argued and parted on bad terms after that, but the God of Chaos and Mischief soon realized Doreen’s words had actually gotten under her skin. They reconciled and Rachel agreed to actually try to do things Doreen’s way and maybe even save the Earth, I guess.

Once they found the Frost Giant base, Doreen decided to lean in to Rachel’s specialty and cause some chaos. They reasoned out the Frost Giants still needed food, and were feeding off of giant whales from the coast of Canada. Ratatoskr led a pod of whales into sabotaging the port while Doreen went to work on the land-based machines supporting the base. Rachel and Doreen then confronted the Frost Giants and convinced them King Laufey didn’t have their best interests at heart. After all, Malekith and Laufey ceding them North America in the invasion was pointless when most of the continent was uninhabitable to the cold-dwelling giants. With no food and limited space, what was the point of this invasion? Squirrel Girl and Ratatoskr introduced democracy to Jotunheim, convincing the Frost Giants to march home. As the war ended, Ratatoskr chose to remain on Earth as investigative reporter Rachel Oskar, stirring things up… for justice. [Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2nd series) #43-46]

One day, Doreen and her friends realized Brain Drain had gone missing. They found a secret code Brian had left for them, indicating he had been kidnapped by Melissa Morbeck. Before they could rescue Brian, Melissa began her attack on Doreen’s life by releasing to the media that Doreen Green and Squirrel Girl were one and the same. She also blew up their apartment building (though Tippy mercifully got Mew the cat to safety first). A casual assortment of past criminals attacked Doreen in public to get revenge on Squirrel Girl, but that was only the beginning of Melissa’s master plan.

When they tracked Melissa and Brain Drain to Central Park, she revealed A) she had coded a backdoor into Tony’s armor to co-opt it as her own villainous identity, the Iron Ring, B) Brian was now hardwired into a giant robot scorpion under her control and C) she had found eager allies willing to join forces against Squirrel Girl including *inhale* Whiplash, the Leader, Taskmaster, M.O.D.O.K., Baron Mordo, Dormammu, Fin Fang Foom and Victor. Von. DOOM. The battle raged and escalated on both sides as Doreen and Tony summoned the Avengers and the villains Doreen had redeemed for aid, but Melissa used her coding to access the Armory and grant Stark Armor to her villains as well. As Brian’s robot body was taken over by Mary, the tide turned against the villains, so Doom betrayed Melissa and set a bomb to destroy the entire battlefield of hero and villain alike. In the final accounting, it was the arrival of Squirrel Girl’s greatest and most cosmic friend that won the day: Galactus. The Devourer used the Power Cosmic to end matters to Doreen’s satisfaction and bade her farewell before returning to the stars. [Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2nd series) #47-50]