Comic Info
Comic Name: Paper Girls
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Cliff Chiang
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2018
Paper Girls #23
Reprints Paper Girls #21-25 (June 2018-October 2018). Trapped in the future, Erin, KJ, Mac, Tiffany, and Tiffany from 2000 are seeking a way to get home. The future poses a chance for Mac to cure her predicted leukemia while KJ tries to interpret the vision of the future she saw with Mac. Erin, Tiffany, and Tiffany 2000 discover an ally from their past could affect their future.
Written by Brian K. Vaughan, Paper Girls—Volume 5 is an Image Comics science-fiction adventure comics. Following Paper Girls—Volume 4, the series features art by Cliff Chiang and issues in this volume are also collected in Paper Girls—Book 3 and Paper Girls—The Complete Story.
Paper Girls is a high concept sci-fi series with unlikely protagonists. With each volume, the characters get more fleshed out and become even more real. Superheroes series generally aren’t based around twelve year old girls…but Paper Girls makes you wish more were.
The volume ratchets up the danger and the stakes. In the future, the girls are being hunted and have no means to get home. Mac who has been dealing with a death sentence discovers that the disease she thought killed her might actually have been caused by the adventure, and Tiffany faces her own mortality as a result of the events. It isn’t untypical in time travel stories, but it is built well. The story is weird circular logic that works because the series has developed it.
Paper Girls #24
The story also starts to tie in the previous events in the past. The characters discover Grand Father is actually the baby Jahpo and his mother Wari is also living in the future. It is typical of time travel stories as well that characters become intertwined in events through time, and Paper Girls story is proving to be a nice new take on the traditions of the niche science-fiction genre.
I love Cliff Chiang’s art. It really breathes life into the characters. The voyage to the future allows Chiang to create an amalgam of high tech and “legacy” buildings which rarely seems to come into play (but definitely would be a thing). The coloring and style of Matt Wilson blends with Chiang’s art as well.
Paper Girls has been a fun ride thus far. The series features great art and clever writing. This volume feels like the threads of the story are really starting to come together and the characters are becoming completely fleshed out. With this being the penultimate entry, I can’t wait to see how it ends…the Paper Girls continue to deliver. Paper Girls—Volume 5 is followed by Paper Girls—Volume 6.
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