My favorite Derek Charm-drawn images from Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 10

1.) X-23 All-New Wolverine X-23 Laura Kinney holding up her pet wolverine Jonathan at Squirrel Girl's funeral. This is part of a two-page sequence in which various Marvel characters all get a panel in which to eulogize the seemingly dead Squirrel Girl. It's a great passage that shows off not only Charm's abilities to draw, like, everyone in the Marvel Universe, but also writer Ryan North's abilities to fire off jokes like a machine gun (The Jessica Jones/Luke Cage panel was particularly great. "She was baby Danielle's nanny, and then adult Danielle traveled back in time from the future to team up with her and fight crime," Jessica says. "No other nanny offered this service," Luke says.)

As for what makes this above panel so great, well, come on, look at that wolverine. I love the fact that Charm drew Jonathan as if he didn't have any available reference for what a wolverine looked like and, in fact, that he had never even heard of a wolverine, but someone had just tried to explain to him what it was as he was drawing that panel. Like, "I guess it's kind of like a mix of a groundhog and the rancor monster from Return of The Jedi? You know that's what the X-Man with the claws is named after, right? So it probably has long claws too..."

2.) Ghost Rider's Triscareatops. When Squirrel Girl chides Tony Stark for thinking she was really dead even though she's named "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl," he replies that he doesn't tak anything for granted, as he works "with a guy named 'Ghost Rider' who's never ridden a single ghost." Which leads to the above panels.

The greatness of this image doesn't really need any explanation, but I would like to reiterate how great Charm is at drawing not only in the fun, cute, Charm-ing style that is so appropriate for Squirrel Girl (and Jughead and Star Wars Adventures), but he's also really good at just drawing straight Marvel superheroes doing superhero stuff. Like, that doesn't look like a "funny" version of Ghost Rider; it looks exactly like Ghost Rider (the current one, if you haven't been reading Ghost Rider comics or the latest volume of Avengers.)

And by the way, I can think of no better example of how good North is at coming up with jokes that he has taken a brilliant name like "Triscareatops" and used it for what is essentially an extra random throwaway gag within a random throwaway gag (Like, the "He would be so much better if he actually just rode around on ghosts" joke would have worked just fine were Ghost Rider depicted riding any kind of ghostly steed there, or even this particular bad-ass burning fossil one, whether or not he announced its He-Man vehicle-like name).

3.) Tippy-Toe eating pizza. I love the way Charm draws Tippy, and I particularly love how huge her bow is. Charm draws her bow the way Kelley Jones draws Batman's ears and cape (Oh God, I want to see Kelley Jones draw Squirrel Girl and Tippy now!). During the funeral scenes, wherein all of the heroes break out there all-black (and/or gray and/or white) costumes, Tippy replaces her pink bow with a black one.

Anyway, in this panel she's using her tiny squirrel paws to shove a giant piece of pizza into her mouth.

4.) The Avengers vs. Skrulls. This is just a too-small portion of what is actually a two-page spread in the arc, depicting what looks to be an early 1970s Avengers line-up battling Skrulls (I think this is form the Kree-Skrull War storyline, but I've never read that, so it's just a semi-educated guess). It's a great image of superhero combat, with nine different heroes all battling Skrulls in an action-packed scene that displays their various powers and, to some degree, their personalities (The look on Quicksilver's face, for example, is perfect). Because it was too big for my scanner, I just focused on The Wasp, who seems to be attacking the scariest, nastiest looking of the dozen or so Skrulls on the spread.

Charm does not draw the entire book himself, just the four issues in which Squirrel Girl and friends must try to figure out what a Skrull is up to on Earth this time. There's also an issue drawn by Naomi Franquiz, and, as per usual, a guest artist draws the art on the relevant Deadpool's Guide To Super Villains trading card employeed in the story. Here, that's Rico Renzi, and he draws a card devoted to The Skrulls. For whatever reason, he decided to work a visual shout-out to Jim Rugg's Street Angel into the image:

 

I can honestly say I never expected to see anything resembling Street Angel in a Marvel comic book. Not that I would mind seeing a comic in which she saves Daredevil's ass by kicking The Hand's ass once and for all or steals Night Thrasher's skateboard and makes him cry or something...