20 most upbeat superhero stories

Cover of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 1, #5 (Image via Marvel)

17. Squirrel Girl

Of course, goofy and lighthearted storylines aren’t the sole purview of male superheroes. Plenty of female superheroes have some pretty serious comedic chops as well.

Take Squirrel Girl. She first appeared in 1992 in Marvel Super-Heroes vol. 2, #8, in a story written by Bill Murray and drawn by Steve Ditko. By the way, Steve Ditko is the co-creator of both Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, so he’s no slouch when it comes to creating interesting characters.

At first, Squirrel Girl seems like little more than an extended joke. Her whole deal revolves around the fact that she can communicate with squirrels. Squirrel Girl (whose human name is Doreen Green) can also employ her furry, prehensile tail, “knuckle spikes”, and pronounced buck teeth for chewing through wood. She also has the standard superhero powers of enhanced strength and agility.

But Squirrel Girl really came into her own with the 2015 debut of her own series, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. In the series, Doreen is a new college student studying computer science. Along with her squirrel sidekick, Tippy-Toe, Doreen encounters a series of friends and villains, including Kraven the Hunter, Doctor Doom, and Galactus.

For all that facing Galactus — who is basically a world-eating apocalypse in a funny hat — can be a serious thing, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl remains unabashedly fun. Squirrel Girl is quirky, intelligent and, perhaps most importantly, relentlessly upbeat without being cloying.