The Monstrefact: Marvel’s Squirrel Girl

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses Squirrel Girl from Marvel Comics…

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters and time.
Long time listeners to Stuff to Blow Your Mind know
that we have an enduring fascination with squirrels, particularly the

(00:30):
Eastern gray squirrel, because these are the creatures I observe
every day, and I constantly find myself either just taking
them for granted or just suddenly recognizing how weird and
fierce they are. They're such survivors, and the same could
be said for Marvel's squirrel Girl. At first glance, you
might think this particular superhero is just here for acute

(00:53):
pose and a few laughs, and yeah, she's totally down
for all of that. But since her creation in the
early nineties by Will Murray and Steve Ditko, Squirrel Girl
has scored victories against such iconic villains as Ultron, Galactus,
Doctor Doom, and Thanos. Okay, so what are her powers,
you might be wondering if you're not familiar with the
character already. Well, first of all, it's important to note

(01:15):
that squirrel Girl is not technically a mutant, but rather
a typical Canadian girl who just gradually began to exhibit
an amazing ability to communicate with squirrels and developed the
various squirrel like physical abilities as pointed out by Mark
Sumrec and Daniel Wallace in the excellent book marvel Anatomy.
She boasts large incisors and rugged climbing claws, both attributes

(01:39):
of the real world furry grappling hooks that we call squirrels.
She also boasts a full fluffy squirrel tale, which I
assume offers a number of benefits enjoyed by her namesake, balance,
shade communication, and locomotion assistance while leaping, falling, landing, or swimming.
Sumeric and Wallace put her vertical jumping ability at thirty

(02:00):
feet or more than nine meters, which feels like a
decent scaling up of squirrel leaping ability. How high could
we leap if we had the leaping ability of a squirrel?
I think that's about accurate. The one head scratcher, however,
is that squirrel Girl also boasts extendable bone knuckle spikes.
They extend wolverine style through the back of her palms.

(02:23):
Jutting out just above her knuckles, enabling her to punch
and carve through wood as well as through ultron drones. Obviously,
rule of cool applies here, and the bone knuckle spikes
are indeed cool, no doubt about it, but they do
seem kind of unnecessary if we're comparing her to squirrels.
Actual squirrels don't have them because they can handle all
their woodworking and robot thrashing with teeth and claws alone.

(02:47):
For natural world analogs to squirrel Girl's knuckle spikes or
Wolverine's famous claus for that matter, we have to leave
the mammal world behind and head into the amphibian world. First,
we can look to the hairy frog or Tricobetracus robustus,
which can break its own toe bones and extend them
through the flesh as makeshift defensive claws, which may later retract,

(03:10):
allowing the flesh to heal back over again. Male autumn
frogs or Babina subaspera, also boast a different form of
retractable spike that extends from under the thumb. Both of
these species are commonly compared to the fictional wolverine, though
his namesake animal also makes do with just teeth and
finger claws alone, no extendable or retractable claws required. Now,

(03:36):
I know there are frog based superheroes and supervillains in
the Marvel world, but do any of them have extendable
horror clause? I don't think that they do, at least
not yet, so I do put the question out there
for any of you comic book fans and especially in
of you hardcore Marvel geeks. If you have an answer

(03:56):
to this question right in, I would love to hear
from you. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster
Fact the Artifact for Animalius Dupendium each week. As always,
you can email us at contact at Stuffdblow your Mind
dot com.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
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