Comic Info
Comic Name: Paper Girls
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Cliff Chiang
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2016
Paper Girls #1
Reprints Paper Girls #1-5 (October 2015-February 2016). When Erin Tieng leaves her home in the early hours of November 1, 1988 to deliver newspapers, she doesn’t expect to find herself in an adventure through time and space. Erin meets up with a group of other paper girls named KJ, Tiffany, and Mac, but an encounter with of group of costumed men leads them to a machine that whisks them to a strange version of their world. Almost everyone is gone, and those KJ, Tiffany, Mac, and Erin find soon disappear just as mysteriously as everyone else. The paper girls find they are caught up in a secret battle and when Erin suffers a deadly injury, time may be running out.
Written by Brian K. Vaughan, Paper Girls—Volume 1 is an Image Comics science-fiction adventure series. Featuring art by Cliff Chiang, the issues in the volume were also collected as part of Paper Girls—Book 1.
Brian K. Vaughan can almost do no wrong in my book. Like other innovative comic book writers before him, Vaughan plays with many comic book tropes. If you don’t like a series, he at least makes it interesting. With the mystery and story just staring in Paper Girls—Volume 1, I’m still on the fence about my overall perception of the series, but all the pieces are there for an interesting ride.
Right now, a lot of the events in Paper Girls feel almost incidental. There’s time travel, old people vs. teens, flying lizards, portals, an Apple Whenhouse, and of course a group of kids caught up in the mess. It is all very random and abstract right now, but having read a lot of Vaughan’s stuff, I hope that it will start to come together as the story progresses.
Paper Girls #5
What is fun is the 1988 aspect of the story. I’m the same age as the paper girls and some of their memories are shared memories. When Tiffany is attacked, she sees all the time she wasted playing Arkanoid on the NES and regrets it. I don’t know if I have the regret, but I spent a lot of time playing NES and Arkanoid in particular, so it will be interesting to see the paper girls’ perception of things around them since I would be in the same boat.
The other real benefit this series has going for it is Cliff Chiang. I really liked Chiang’s style and I liked his work on the New 52 relaunch of Wonder Woman for DC. While Wonder Woman dealt with a lot of fantasy and mythology, Paper Girls is more grounded in reality, tech, and sci-fi, so I look forward to see how Chiang illustrates future issues.
Paper Girls—Volume 1 is an exciting first step. I have faith in Vaughan that I will end up liking it despite being a little hesitant about aspects of this collection. The series has a lot of similarities to Netflix’s Stranger Things and fans of that series might enjoy reading Paper Girls even if they aren’t necessarily a “comic book reader”. Paper Girls—Volume 1 is followed by Paper Girls—Volume 2.
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