NYCC 2015: Ryan North and Chip Zdarsky Talk the Howard the Duck and Squirrel Girl Crossover

Both Squirrel Girl and Howard the Duck have developed quite the following at Marvel with Ryan North penning SQUIRREL GIRL and Chip Zdarsky writing HOWARD THE DUCK. What do you do when to characters get this big? You put them together in their own adventure. At the Women of Marvel panel at New York Comic Con over the weekend, Marvel announced these two characters would be involved in an adventure together. Ryan North and Chip Zdarsky discussed the upcoming book and their Twitter conversations.

COMIC VINE: What is this cross-over all about?

RYAN NORTH: It's about Howard and Squirrel Girl coming up against a bad guy neither can defeat on their own, which for Squirrel Girl is a pretty big deal, but which for Howard I guess is depressingly routine. So they work together, only one of them is really bad at working in groups, and at the end NOTHING IS THE SAME AGAIN.

CHIP ZDARSKY: It's about friendship. Between creators and characters. And creators and readers?

CV: What do you like about these characters crossing over?

NORTH: I like how they're two people who don't know each other, but which you get the impression they should probably know each other? And I like that when they meet Howard is a jerk as usual. Squirrel Girl always wants everyone to be happy, and Howard usually doesn't care about what strangers think of him, so it's fun to see those to bump into each other.

Also I like that he's a talking duck man.

ZDARSKY: I feel like this is less about the characters crossing over and more about the creators crossing over. Ryan and I hang out a lot, Joe and Erica hang out a lot, so getting to come together and make this is pretty fun. The fact that Howard and Doreen are so different in their outlooks just makes it better, like icing on our friendship cake.

CV: How does Squirrel Girl play into all of this?

NORTH: Howard's not really a guy with what you'd call "powers", and Squirrel Girl can talk to squirrels and jump hecka far, so I'm looking forward to Howard trying to get Squirrel Girl to solve all his problems. Like he just sends her these misspelled texts saying "i cannnt find m hat plz find it >:|" and expects her to help because she's got powers. That doesn't happen in our story though... but maybe it should??

ZDARSKY: Howard is a grown man-duck with a thriving private investigation business, he can totally solve his own problems, except for why this squirrel girl is getting on his case. Why can't everyone just leave Howard alone? He's very nice.

CV: What was it like writing Howard the Duck?

NORTH: We haven't started the dialogue yet, so I can't really say! But I did post some stuff on Twitter where I wrote a fake I mean real Howard script and Chip wrote a fake I mean real Squirrel Girl script and they were pretty mean, so I guess to answer your question it's been... educational.

ZDARSKY: I got to write a couple of Squirrel Girl bits in HOWARD #1 and it felt fantastic. Like, she's MY character now? I feel that's a fair thing to say.

CV: Where did the idea for the light-yellow comments at the very bottom of the page in SQUIRREL GIRL come about?

ZDARSKY: What? How would I know?

NORTH: I got those from my comic, Dinosaur Comics, where I hide an extra joke that only appears when you hover your mouse over the image! This was the print equivalent of that. A little something extra for Squirrel Girl readers, you know? Not like in those OTHER Marvel comics.

CV: What were your first experiences with Howard the Duck?

ZDARSKY: I had a weird uncle who collected them! Whenever my family would go over to his house I'd sneak away and read them all, whispering to myself "One day you'll write this, and he'll meet a squirrel girl." Life is good.

NORTH: The twist ending is that Chip's weird uncle... WAS HIMSELF ALL ALONG??

Thanks to Ryan North and Chip Zdarsky for answering our questions and make sure to check out this crossover when it hits stores in Spring 2016.