Comic Info
Comic Name: Paper Girls
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Cliff Chiang
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2017
Paper Girls #12
Reprints Paper Girls #11-15 (February 2017-June 2017). Erin, KJ, Tiffany, and Mac find themselves trapped in the past and teamed with a young mother named Wari who is trying to protect her child from the dangers that hunt them. When a strange visitor from the future arrives in a time capsule, it could the paper girls’ only means to get home…and a race against time to beat time begins.
Written by Brian K. Vaughan, Paper Girls—Volume 3 is an Image Comics sci-fi coming-of-age comic book collection. Following Paper Girls—Volume 2, the series features art by Cliff Chiang and issues in this collection were also collected as part of Paper Girls—Book 2 and Paper Girls: The Complete Story.
Brian K. Vaughan has a knack for storytelling. His hits to misses percentage (in my book) is a lot better than many of his contemporaries and it is probably because he often chooses smart and creator driven stories. Paper Girls is no exception. Having finished Volume 2, I had to get Volume 3 the next day.
For those reading Paper Girls, you have to start at the beginning, there is no “jump on” with the title and anything you’d read in these higher volumes would just ruin things if you didn’t read the earlier ones. While time travel stories are often played fast and loose, Vaughan seems to be really creating a deck of cards time travel storyline under the rule that “if it happened, it happened and it can’t be changed. This is my favorite type of time travel story and helps propel Paper Girls forward.
Paper Girls #14
This story is a bit more KJ focused while previous volumes focused a bit more on Erin. KJ (who was missing all of Volume 2) gets to start growing up before a lot of the other characters and despite Erin being an interesting character, KJ feels bit more rounded in the present (we haven’t seen a future version). The fact the series has four interesting leads, allows for them to be developed and not be clones of the same young adult…they all have different backstories and they all see things different (though I though one of the four would have been a dinosaur geek and recognize a giant sloth).
With fantastic art by Cliff Chiang (and great coloring by Matt Wilson), Paper Girls is a complete package. The story is interesting, the characters are good, and Vaughan is crafting and weaving a bigger story that hopefully pays off (things like this always scare me…look at Game of Thrones and Lost). Paper Girls in general isn’t the longest series, but this volume marks the halfway point…long live the Paper Girls! Paper Girls—Volume 3 is followed by Paper Girls—Volume 4.
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