https://www.thatericalper.com/2026/08/30/will-murray-prolific-pulp-fiction-writer-and-co-creator-of-squirrel-girl-dies-at-73/>In comics, Murray’s most enduring contribution came through his collaboration with legendary artist Steve Ditko, with whom he co-created the character Squirrel Girl for Marvel Comics in 1991. He went on to write stories featuring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and numerous other iconic characters across the industry, along with scripting The Destroyer’s black-and-white magazine adaptation and stories for Iron Man and the Punisher.
>>155243780What a shameRIP
>>155243780RIP
>>155243851
>>155243780I liked that Doc Savage book he did with The Shadow in it
>>155243926I wish I could draw like this.. but every time I pick up a pencil I am not INSTANTLY Alex Ross so therefore I am a failure and must KILL MYSELF..
>>155243780Mods? Sticky!
Can't even catch a break on the weekend. Pour one out for Willy.
>>155243926A Squirrel Girl cartoon where she looks like this would sell BUCKETS of cu- I mean cash.
>>155243780RIP. She's been a good addition to Marvel. Like the Tick she's a clearly comedic character but fortunately veered away from the one note route and can be used in a variety of things.
>>155245165Damn.. Wolverine tapped that?!
holy shit RIP, why are the old creatives kicking off this monthJABBEDANON WHERE ARE YOU WE NEED YOUR COMEDY MORE THAN EVER
niggas... that's not nuts at all....
>>155243780I shall spend a day as Squirrel Girl on Marvel Rivals being toxic. In his memory.
>>155245771Based
>>155243780F
>>155243780Awww man this sucks. What a rotten week
>>155243780FBut I still love the story they sold the last squirrel girl comic in Japan with a Giruhiru cover and all of them tried to return the comic based on the interior art
>>155244339>mods>on /co/no one tell him
>>155247262Someone tell him..
Need to comm SG porn in his honour.
F
IIRC Squirrel Girl’s whole look and personality was based off a gf he had at the time. Short hair, really chipper, into animals.
>>155249510based i do the same with my OCS
>>155243780SQUIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREL STAMPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDE
He should really be remembered for how much meticulous work he put into preserving The Shadow and Doc Savage. RIP.
>>155243780Ahh, nuts...
>>155243780GG
>>155243780FThis needs a sticky
RIP great pulp historian.
For Christ's sake! Can we not catch a break with these /co/-related celebrities dying? I can only feel sad for so long.
>>155243780Did he ever say anything publicly about his one-off gag character suddenly becoming popular in the 2000s?
>>155245202Yes.
>>155245728Creativity itself is dying.
Interview with him from last year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UyVm3CwP4A&t
>>155243780Rest in peace pre2015 squirrel girl was great.
Meh, he was no Ryan North.
>>155243780Damn, I wonder if he knew what he unleashed onto the world...Godspeed and God bless him.
>>155243780Yiff in hell furfag
>>155244014Once you get older you gain a >FUCK it, i'll do it anywayattitude.Outcome inpendnace is necessary to keeping the motivation to do something.You can always learn/fix it either during or after the creating process.
>>155255095Yes, it's even funnier when you remember Squirrel Girl is based on a real person he knew
>>155244014You don't have to be Alex Ross, because he's overra- because you're a different human being. Develop your own artstyle, draw however you can, being different shouldn't be a problem anon. Do it, come on
>>155255139I'm pretty sure that isn't an image of the guy who died
>>155254936Did.. did she eat him?
>Will Murray, a prolific pulp novelist and the co-creator of Squirrel Girl, died on August 24, 2026, at the age of 73.>"I was born in 1953, the same year the pulps died," Murray said in a 1997 autobiographical sketch now at the Internet Archive, but ironically, he did a good deal to keep the category alive, writing almost two dozen Doc Savage novels as well as Tarzan and Mars Attacks!, almost always under a pseudonym.>By his own account, Murray started reading comics in 1961 and was introduced to The Shadow and The Green Hornet two years later via revivals of the radio shows on Boston’s WORL. "I was forced to read 1930s-era Nancy Drew books by a well-meaning third grade teacher who inadvertently exposed me to the kind of stuff that by the time I broke down and read my first Doc Savage in January 1969, basically meant there was no turning back," he wrote in that 1997 profile. He began collecting pulps and related material, wrote fanzine articles, and published his own fanzine, Duende, on a very irregular basis – the two issues came out in April 1975 and Winter 1976/77. The third issue became The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine, published in 1980 by Odyssey. "Universal used it as one of the source books for their ill-starred Shadow film," he wrote. "Buying copies of the book meant they didn't have to hire me as a consultant. I'll never write another book like that again."
>In 1979, Murray graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, with a bachelor’s degree in English. That same year, he began his professional writing career with the afterword to the posthumously published Lester Dent Doc Savage novel The Red Spider. Dent was the creator of Doc Savage and wrote numerous novels and stories about the character, most of them under the name Kenneth Robeson, before his death in 1959. Through his fanzine writing, Murray became friends with Dent's widow, Norma, and became her literary agent, helping with copyright, finding places to reprint Dent’s work, and buying the rights to the outlines for his unwritten novels. One of these outlines, Python Isle, became Dent's first published novel and the first of 20 Doc Savage novels that he was to write in the coming years.>Murray also wrote a number of novels in Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir’s The Destroyer series, as well as two The Destroyer black-and-white series for Marvel.>Squirrel Girl made her first appearance in 1992 in a story titled "The Coming of... Squirrel Girl" in Marvel Super-Heroes Vol. 2 #8, published by Marvel Comics. Murray co-created the character with Steve Ditko. As he said in a 2009 interview with Jazma Online
>"Actually I created Squirrel Girl in script form without any artist input. Tom Morgan was originally going to draw it, but when he dropped out, I requested Ditko and got him. Ditko did a great job in bringing my baby to life. He invented that knuckle spike. It wasn’t in the script. I based Squirrel Girl ironically enough on a long–ago girlfriend who read comics and was into "critters"—wild animals of all types. Coincidentally, she was big Ditko fan. I think I got the idea because I had a bunch of squirrels running around my roof and sometimes coming in through my open bedroom window and inspiration struck.>"By a strange coincidence, although I never described SG physically in my story, Ditko somehow managed to capture the likeness of my old girlfriend. I’ve been thinking of pitching Marvel a Squirrel Girl project. She’s defeated most of the major Marvel super villains. It’s time she met her match in The Ultimate Pistachio.">Marvel turned down Murray’s pitch for a follow-up story in which she tries to join the Fantastic Four, and she made only a few appearances from then until writer Dan Slott included her in his 2005 Great Lakes Avengers miniseries. She got her first solo ongoing series in 2014, with The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North and Erica Henderson
> Although Murray’s original story has been reprinted in several collections, it appears to be his only published Squirrel Girl comic. While he wrote a number of prose stories featuring Marvel characters, including the novel Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Empyre, Murray's comics credits end in the early 1990s.>That may have been because he was so busy writing both fiction and nonfiction, which included comics history. Over the course of his life, Murray wrote over 40 novels as well as short stories, nonfiction books, and articles, most of them about well-known characters from Sherlock Holmes to the creations of H.P. Lovecraft to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and he received several awards for his research and fiction. In 2023 he received the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award.
>>155256120Thank you for the new fetish, anon.
>>155243780nuts
>>155243780Rip
>>155244592>A Squirrel Girl cartoon where she looks like this would sell BUCKETS of cu- I mean cashTV shows don't work like that. It's not the box office. Cape cartoons typically existed to sell toys. If the toys sell like ass, then the show gets canceled.
>>155255946CUTEST she's ever looked!
>>155243780RIP, thanks for your service.
>>155243780bump
Guy was a repository of pulp knowledge that's now gone forever. F
>>155243780F.
Is this what a white nigger (not to be confused with "wigger") looks like?
What in high heaven? How many people have passed away right now?
I mean what the fuck are those lips
>>155243780Damn...
>>155261110A lot it does happen constantly
>>155261339creepy
>>155243780I'm going to give him this.F
>>155243780Everybody here still reads his comics?
>>155261371dem tiddies tho
>>155269863Yes?>no storytime of Squirrel Girl's first appearance ittOh forget it, you're right>>155261339>>155261078Cute goofball
Fine...
>>155244014REAL
>>155272804Thanks anon
>>155273121Thank you
>>155273140You're welcome. She's the best superheroine
a mask or giving her more squirrel features like an animal nose wouldn't be bad
>>155273153Aye, also I swear I had a bunch of her Great Lakes stuff saved on my harddrive but I cannot find it.
>>155273073>>155273089Those water ripples lookin real nice
>>155272804Very nice
>>155261339>>155272882When's the last time that knuckle spike showed up?
>>155243780Okay guys. To commemorate this guy’s passing, I think we all need to read all of his comics right now, with no exceptions.
>>155256196>The third issue became The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine, published in 1980 by Odyssey. "Universal used it as one of the source books for their ill-starred Shadow film," he wrote. That's cool.>"Buying copies of the book meant they didn't have to hire me as a consultant. I'll never write another book like that again."That sucks. Fucking Hollywood.
How many Squirrel Girl do we have?
>>155261339Shading in lips like that was something Ditko started doing alot as he switched to mainly worked in self-published black and white. Basically a way to indicate color without actual color. I don't think he took how color would look on it in consideration.
>>155276837Based Mocker post
Logan is a sick motherfucker for what he did to this little girl
>>155276126It's not like the Shadow film was any good
