ReadItDaddy's Comic of the Week - Week Ending 10th August 2018: "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Volume 8: My Best Friend's Squirrel" by Ryan North and Erica Henderson (Marvel)

Since making the swap between print and digital for comic consumption, I've been spoiled for choice with comics being readily available on day of release...
But there's one comic series we always sign up for as soon as the collected volumes become available. "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl" is now up to Volume 8 with "My Best Friend's Squirrel" (will they ever run out of snappy song-based names for these awesome comics?)

This time Doreen "Squirrel Girl" Green finds herself halfway across the galaxy...

When Nancy and Tippy mysteriously disappear, Squirrel Girl makes a slightly questionable alliance with Loki - the new chief sorcerer supreme of Earth (wait, he's WHAT now?)

After translating some cat-speak, Squirrel Girl and Loki soon find themselves at the centre of a galactic mystery involving three strange surfer dudes (including a silver one who does NOT look like the infamous herald of Galactus) and a whole planet of green squirrels fearing for their very existence.

Throw Drax the Destroyer and the Milano into the mix and you've got a completely trippy space-opera edition of the comic that heralds (sob, sniff) the departure of Erica and leaves us wondering just who could possibly fill her colossal shoes on this utterly brilliant comic.

The first story pips along quite wonderfully, and it's that rare beast - a comic that both C and I can enjoy in equal measure, something that never gets old or tired when it comes to comics.

Then North and Henderson throw something at you that you're not quite expecting, paring Nancy and Doreen out from their supporting cast in the second main story in this collection for something that almost broke us - a beautiful and emotional tale of Nance and Squizzers being trapped in Hypertime - moving stupendously fast compared to the rest of the world, and able to live an entire lifetime together as they fix all of New York's disasters and soon-to-be disasters. There's a subtle tale here about the selfishness of everyday people (who are quick to take advantage of the fact that Nancy and Doreen can stop them from dying if they hurl themselves off buildings for social media kicks, or read a book / fall asleep while driving their car to work).

The touching story that evolves around Nancy and Doreen's friendship as they grow old and grey together is just beautifully told and illustrated and was an unexpected bonus in what was already a great collection.

Dang we really are going to miss Erica so much though.