Don’t You Dare Molesplain to Me
Written By:
Ryan North
Art By:
Erica Henderson, Tom Fowler, Rico Renzi, Kyle Starks
Lettered By:
Travis Lanham
Cover Price:
$3.99
On Sale Date: July 27, 2016
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE
BOTTOM**
Boy, did the ending of the last issue of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl have me sitting
on the edge of my seat! For a whole month! Let me tell you, my legs fell asleep
about a week ago and I don’t think blood has been circulating within them for
three or four days! I’ve actually been in excruciating pain the entire time!
But I have been totally thinking about this “meet cute” between Mole Man and
Squirrel Girl, just “shipping” them and “fangirling” about this totally awesome
celebrity comic book couple! Big problem is the celebrity couple name. Their
civilian identities of Doreen Green and Harvey Rupert Elder offer little help:
all I could come up with is Hareen Grelder and Drupert Eldeen, neither of which
are really headline-making. But their other identities as Squirrel Girl and
Mole Man held some more hope. Since their costumed surnames distinguish their
gender, they are naturally combined with a hyphen: Man-Girl or Girl-Man.
(Man-Girl has a slightly better ring to it, but it’s not like true love is
dependent on how catchy your combined last name is!) So it’s just a matter of
squashing “Squirrel” and “Mole” together, and in the interest of space I will
just reveal this amazing best option for the celebrity couple name for Squirrel
Girl and Mole Man: Squole Man-Girl! It just makes me wanna squee! But can this
relationship stand under the crushing weight of this amazing combined name?
Read on to find out!
Remember how Mole Man said he was going to keep
stealing the surface world’s monuments into his underground Mole Lair (aka the
Hollow Earth) until Squirrel Girl agrees to go on a date with him? Well, he’s
still going on about that. The whole world thinks Doreen aka Squirrel Girl
should be going on this one measly date so they can get their giant statues and
towers or whatever back, but Nancy and Doreen are back at their apartment like ugh like ugh like can you beLIEVE it,
I am NOT going to be threatened into dating! And plus I don’t like Mole Man
that way. And still, Mole Man is like oh, the Roman Coliseum? Yoink! Oh,
the Statue of Liberty? Yoink! Oh, the Great Wall of China? Well, that’s a big
yoink, but I can yoink a chunk of it, thereby rendering it a fail wall. Yoink!
Man, imagine you had to consider causing an international incident every time
you made your dating decisions! (If you’re reading this, Madeline Albright,
please write in and tell us what it’s like.)
Squirrel Girl is not really one to hide from her
responsibilities OR be less than one-hundred per cent up front about her stance
on things, so she decides to scurry to Central Park and go give this Mole Man a
stern talking to. Once at the park, there’s like a million news reporters
hanging around, waiting for Squirrel Girl to show up so they can ask a million
questions apiece, which by the way would be one trillion questions! So S. Girl
flits away back to the apartment to brainstorm with Nancy, Mew and Tippy Toe.
Nancy quickly suggests that she go down into Mole Man territory and give him a
stern talking to, which she is not afraid to do since she slapped him last
issue. Of course Doreen is not cool with her best friend and roommate putting
herself in mortal peril, but Nancy is like nah it will be cool so Doreen
agrees…on one condition! The two of them go to the Central Park Mole Lair
Entrance (conveniently located near the 72nd Street subway stop) and
Squirrel Girl creates a distraction while Nancy stealthily plops down some hole
and into the Underworld. Down below, she tells Mole Man what’s what, and that he’s
got to back off and stop trying to be a supervillain as an answer to
everything, Mole Man tries to insinuate that Nancy has competing feelings for
Doreen! Which honestly might be true, I haven’t gotten that vibe but I won’t
pretend to know the inner-workings of Nancy’s mind, but whether it’s true or
not it’s still uncool to seduce someone by stealing monuments! Mole Man
threatens to keep Nancy underground as further enticement to Squirrel Girl, and
that’s when Nancy unleashes Tippy Toe and like two dozen other squirrels from
her satchel and runs away! As proven before in this comic book, chucking a
bunch of squirrels at anyone pretty much gives you ample time to escape, if you
don’t incapacitate them entirely with sheer squirrel mass.
Hearing Nancy’s plight back at the apartment, Doreen
is mega-pissed and decides enough is enough: she’s going to utilize her
squirrel-borne power of burrowing to tunnel down to the Mole Man and give him a
piece of her mind! As she descends upon the Moley One himself, one of Mole
Man’s underworld beasts, the three-headed Tricephalous, whaps her aside with
one of its mighty wings and tell her to back off…from the man it loves! Tricephalous
then details a history of Mole Man fighting surface antagonists, always to
protect the Moloids and other weird, giant monsters that sort of lurk around
wherever Mole Man’s is. Tricephalous starts too attack Squirrel Girl with
fire-breath and flying (mostly as a conveyance of fire-breath) when Tippy Toe,
who has been hanging out on Squirrel Girl’s shoulder, suggests that she forfeit
this conflict so Mole Man will be on Tricephalous’ jock and stop hassling our
Girl. This is exactly what happens, at considerable pain but no major injury to
Doreen, and Mole Man walk off into the cave sunset, aka just a darker section
of the Underworld, leaving Doreen and her friends to raise all the Earth’s
monuments, with a little help from Tony Stark and a whole lot of squirrels.
Another hilarious, informative issue of the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, that
pitches a good lesson about respecting other people’s boundaries while reading
as a swell story. I thought that including the public opinion about Doreen’s
dating life, which was generally “what’s the harm in one date?” was a good
look, since that’s sort of the notion we’re bred with, and it’s really not fair
to the one being dated that might not be so into the idea. I mean, what if
Doreen had just gone on one date with Mole Man, and then tried to call it off, do you think Mole Man would just be cool
with it and go back to hanging out underground? Heck no! He would have stolen
all the world’s water or held the U.S President hostage or something until
Doreen agreed to marry him. Not to mention the message this would send other supervillains
that have crushes on their nemeses! I also learned a couple of facts about
star-nosed moles that were really interesting. As usual, there’s no way I could
do this issue, jam-packed with gags as it is, justice in a recap. You should
really go and check it out for yourselves.
Bits and
Pieces:
8/10
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