I’ve had a very hard time trying to write this review, and you’ll see why if you read on. When I read the last issue of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, I had many/certain expectations for future issues, but this one was a disappointment in more than a couple of ways.
The plot line is interesting enough and very simple as it was in issue #6, but it can be confusing when, as in my case, you’re not used to seeing so many arrows all around the pages. You can get lost very easily with this “choose your own adventure” and I think that’s not what the writer wanted their readers to feel.
Still, the book is funny, entertaining, and will have you laughing a lot when you first read it, but when you think a little about this issue as a whole you discover there could have been better options when it came to the choosing diverging points.
Issues arise because unlike a book, we instead see everything that’s going on all at once. Having multiple arcs, and two complete story’s, going on within a single page is a real workout that gets confusing. In a comic this choose your own adventure idea doesn’t quite work because we can still read the alternate path like an infograpfic just to know what happens next. Some may like this style, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me (comics are weird).
The art style with the book is nothing that while blow you away, but in this issue in particular had some issues. I felt that there were several parts that seemed rushed in order to make a deadline and the quality suffered.
Yes, there are panels and pages that are well done, seemingly trying to compensate for the mistakes made in the others. But the art is very inconsistent in my opinion and almost nearly becomes a visual disaster because of this.
The cover is something I’m still trying to like. While it’s very different from what we are used to seeing, it just doesn’t really work. Most of the time you’d hear me saying that the cover is better than the art inside, as the cover is what grabs readers, but this one it’s the exception.
The best part of this issue is the presence of Galactus who serves as host for the book. Coming from a planet-eater-being, he’s very sympathetic, likable and funny in his own way, and you can hate me all you want for saying this, but his pages are the best ones and save the book. Maybe more development could have suited him, but I’m okay whit what they gave us.
If anyone wants to know, my favorite ending (SPOILER ALERT) was the one involving the Squirrel Girl studying for her exams. Many of the endings are pretty cruel as choose your own adventure books love to do and that’s something playing in favor of this issue.
I’m going to still keep reading a couple of issues in this series as the last one left me very enthusiastic, and there’s still a part of my mind telling me “it’s just a bad issue, no big deal.”
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