We are big fans of libraries in our family. In fact, live near the border between two counties, and we split our library visits between the Lexington Public Library (where we are residents) and the Jessamine County Public Library (where we are not). Luckily, Kentucky library systems tend to be fairly liberal in handing out library cards, so this isn’t usually a hassle (this was not the case in Central Michigan, but that’s a story for another time).

I never would have picked this comic up on my own, but I discovered it through TVTropes, read it over two days, and really enjoyed i! Fraction’s take on writing it is similar to Ryan North’s take on Squirrel Girl, with a lot of humor, very little taking oneself seriously, and plenty of story to keep the whole thing together. The comic leans into the silliness of Olsen as a character and embraces a lot of the Silver Age approach to comics.

This is, in my view, the weakest arc in all of North’s run on Squirrel Girl, and I think it’s because it’s the only time that North’s story gets a significant connecting to an overarching Marvel plot. It’s not bad—the characters and art are still interesting in the ways that previous stories have been—but I just didn’t feel as engaged by any of it as I had been in previous TPBs.

I feel pretty confident that this is the last of the TPBs that I’ve previously read. When first starting it, I thought that I hadn’t read it before, but it became familiar pretty quickly. I still miss Henderson’s art, but the series continue to be good! North has good ideas, Brain Drain is inspiring in a funny and goofy kind of way, and Squirrel Girl continue to represent intelligence and empathy.

This, the final arc in the TUSG book, was a delightful way to wrap up the series. It captured all the stories, characters, art, and ideas that made this comic so great and gave them the ending that they deserved. There were a lot of callbacks to previous parts of the series, and it could have been annoying, but I found it to be a nice way of wrapping everything up.

Beginning with this collection, the art changes, which I was sure would be an issue for me (no pun intended). I really like Erica Henderson’s drawing, and I think it fits North’s writing better, so I knew I would miss it. However, this TPB also has one of the best stories of the run in it—one that I’d forgotten all about. North really wrestles with his recurring theme of redemption rather than punishment with a multi-issue story on Kraven the Hunter—but still writes it in a way that affirms hope in the power of redemption.

This is another collection that I think I’ve read once but didn’t remember terribly well and was happy to return to it. I don’t know if I’ve read the next collection or not—it will be interesting to see when I begin to venture into the unknown. I think this TPB has one of the most creative and sweetest stories in the whole run—one about the friendship between Doreen and her roommate Nancy.

With this TPB, I continued to get into stories I’m not as familiar with but that make the best of this goofy series. I think my favorite issue in this collection is the “zine,” which presents itself as an in-universe comic put together by the characters in the series. It is a great example of how North and the other have fun with this medium instead of just phoning the comics in.

As with the last collection of TUSG issues, I have read these stories before, but not recently and not often, so it was fun to revisit them. After finishing this collection, I had to go back to the regular TPBs rather than this double TPB format, and that’s made me better appreciate these large formats, which leave out things like the letters page, etc. I have enjoyed reading those before, but when trying to power through the entire series, it’s nice to remove extraneous information and focus on the stuff I’m really there to read.

I’m less familiar with this part of the Squirrel Girl series, so it was even more fun to revisit these issues as I try to make my way through the whole series. North is a great author for this kind of thing—I get a bit grumpy about his computer science lessons because of my complicated feelings toward computer science education (I’m for it but not necessarily in the way it’s being done) , but otherwise, I love his dialogue, characters, plots, and absurdity.

I recently finished the new Squirrel Girl podcast written by North, which made me miss the comics. I’ve also been meaning to finish the series, which ended in 2019 but I never caught up on. So, I checked on the hoopla app connected to my library account and discovered that the whole series is finally available there—hooray! I own all of these issues in trade paperback, but I read them on my phone to give me something productive to do on my phone.