Brian K. Vaughan is back again, and this time he’s taking readers back to the 80’s. Sort of.
Paper Girls, Vaughan’s newest series, follows four young girls as they go on a strange, interdimensional adventure. These teenage girls are ripped from their home in 1988 and thrown into an unbelievable world in a story that, while interesting, is somewhat confusing at the start.
We’re Not in Kansas Anymore
The insanity of Paper Girls kicks off very quickly in the first issue. Our four protagonists – Mac, Tiffany, KJ, and Erin – are all newspaper delivery girls working their jobs the day after Halloween in 1988. Erin starts the night working alone, but she soon bumps into the other three girls after some local teenagers start picking on her.
The four of them team up to keep each other safe, encounter some ninjas who speak in a weird dialect, and eventually discover a strange machine in an abandoned house. This machine activates and they emerge from the house to see a new sky, dinosaurs, and everyone missing, save the strange ninja people with a weird foreign dialect and people wearing white jumpsuits who use staves that seem to vaporize people.
After fighting with one of the ninjas, the girls find a device with the Apple logo, leaving them, and the reader, to wonder where they are.
As with most comic book series, the first volume of Paper Girls is mostly exploratory. It serves the purpose of setting up the world. However, it is certainly easy to get confused. It’s always smart to make sure people understand a story’s world, and, to that end, there could have been a little more detail. This series uses a space-time plot, which is already confusing on its own. If there were just a few more subtle details, such as a bit of exploration into the people who inhabit this strange land, the whole story would click better.
These Girls are SO 1988
Many characters are introduced in the first volume of Paper Girls, but the focus is on Mac, Tiffany, JK and Erin. All four girls get a lot of page time, but Mac and Erin see the most growth.
It is very easy to believe that Mac is a rebellious teen from the 80s. She looks and talks the part perfectly, with her 80s punk clothes and swear-filled vocabulary. Mac actually caused a bit of drama when the first issue released, as her use of a homophobic slur caused a store to completely stop stocking the series. While the disdain for the word used is understandable, it feels important to help readers understand what kind of person she is. It also serves as a reminder that not all comics and graphic novels are for kids.
Erin, on the other hand, is great as Mac’s opposite. She is the most innocent and kind of the two (she immediately tells Mac that using the slur is not a good thing to do). However, she also has some strange backstory that just needs to be fleshed out. She has two very strange nightmares that make it easy to wonder what kind of headspace she is in. It’s a mystery that I know will be fleshed out later, but I still wanted to get just a small tease as to whether it’s something wrong with her psyche or something more supernatural.
There are almost too many other side characters encountered throughout the book. Over the course of the volume, we learn the identity of some of the ninjas and also get a brief glimpse at the people in white jumpsuits, who seem to be led by some old hipster. There’s also a guy in a werewolf mask who’s just there for some odd reason. A lot of the other characters who are brought into the story exist solely to get vaporized by the people in the white jumpsuits. It just feels strange to see a character, gain some interest in them, and then turn the page to see them vanish.
TL;DR
Paper Girls is confusing, but extremely interesting. Anyone who reads comics is aware that Brian K. Vaughan knows what he is doing. He creates realistic characters that, when combined with Cliff Chiang’s detailed and somewhat trippy art, make for a good read that will no doubt have a stronger volume two.
+ Realistic and interesting characters
+ A good starting plot and mystery
+ Beautiful art that perfectly matches the tone
+ Mysterious language that can actually be translated
- Could use a little more clarification at times
- Too many characters for one book
Also, as a fun little side note, the strange, symbol-based language used by the ninja people in the first few issues is actually translatable. Some very smart Reddit users figured out the language and posted the translations online. The translations for issue one, done by Reddit user Blackbird1013, can be seen here.
Featured image from: Jared K. Fletcher's Tumblr
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