FREE SCI-FI COMICS: Paper Girls
Tuesday 1st November 1988, 4.40am. Twelve year old Erin Tieng is starting her new job, delivering newspapers (the Cleveland Preserver) in Stony Stream, Ohio. It's not too demanding an occupation; all you have to do is cycle around town and throw rolled-up papers into front porches.
This morning has an added complication, though: roaming teenage hoodlums still in fancy dress from the trick-or-treating of the night before...
Erin falls foul of a particularly obnoxious Freddy Krueger, but is rescued by the timely arrival of three more paper girls. They invite her to join them for strength in numbers. And it turns out to be a good decision because there are more costumed hooligans still roaming the streets. These ones look particularly strange, too: wrapped in black bandages from head to foot...
The creepy thugs ambush one of the paper girls and steal one of her CB radios. Our four cycling heroines set out to get it back, confident that, together, they are a force to be reckoned with: Mackenzie (Mac), foul-mouthed and cigarette-smoking, is their ballsy leader, backed up by Tiffany (Tiff), KJ (Kaje) and Erin ("new girl").
Tracking the guys to an empty house they find something very strange in the basement: a bizarre object somewhat resembling a space capsule...
Things soon get A LOT stranger: unseasonal thunder, a sky with wrong stars, the population of the town disappearing and a huge rip in spacetime disgorging time-travelling knights in armour riding pterosaurs. And that's just for starters...
Paper Girls by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Cliff Chiang is a wild ride into the unknown as our four young protagonists become mixed up in a war between rival factions of time travellers. Frequently thrown into different time periods and meeting future versions of themselves, the girls fight to stay one step ahead of the "Old Timers" who are hunting them to stop them from altering the past. Armed with little more than their own ingenuity, they find themselves catapulted from one surreal scenario to the next, never knowing what lies ahead.
This is also the story of the friendship between the four girls and their individual development, taking in issues of identity, responsibility, race, sexuality, morality and mortality. There is also the timeless dilemma of whether or not the ends justify the means and the quest of finding a meaning for life itself. These serious threads somehow lay comfortably alongside the outlandish narrative without losing any of their emotional punch, and without diluting the fun, adventurous tone.
As with any time travel tale, the issues around being aware of the consequences of your choices are starkly highlighted. Every character is acting according to their own beliefs in the rightness of their actions, based on their own predictions of what the outcome of each option will be. This leaves plenty of room for disagreement, of course: the "Old Timers" want to prevent any interference in the past whereas their younger adversaries see themselves as Robin Hood-style heroes. Then there are the hapless paper girls just trying to survive the madness they have been flung into.
Chiang's art is a perfect balance of fresh and polished, conveying every emotional tone flawlessly. The compositions and designs have a touch of Mœbius-like otherworldliness. Colourist Matt Wilson adds to this dimension with a palette that creates oddly twilight atmospheres to many of the scenes.
Paper Girls is a successful blend of the fantastical with the gritty and benefits from the best of both qualities. The girls' courage, insecurities and imperfections play off each other wonderfully... some of the one-liners had me laughing out loud.
It's a complex, dizzying whole that somehow fits together and works for the reader on many levels. It's an escapist joyride but sneaks in some deep philosophical themes. The woman who invented time travel takes a walk with Mac on the last day of planet Earth's existence and tells her:
"... the amount of time we're each given is irrelevant. It's what we choose to do with every second that counts."
Zak Webber
Erin falls foul of a particularly obnoxious Freddy Krueger, but is rescued by the timely arrival of three more paper girls. They invite her to join them for strength in numbers. And it turns out to be a good decision because there are more costumed hooligans still roaming the streets. These ones look particularly strange, too: wrapped in black bandages from head to foot...
The creepy thugs ambush one of the paper girls and steal one of her CB radios. Our four cycling heroines set out to get it back, confident that, together, they are a force to be reckoned with: Mackenzie (Mac), foul-mouthed and cigarette-smoking, is their ballsy leader, backed up by Tiffany (Tiff), KJ (Kaje) and Erin ("new girl").
Tracking the guys to an empty house they find something very strange in the basement: a bizarre object somewhat resembling a space capsule...
Things soon get A LOT stranger: unseasonal thunder, a sky with wrong stars, the population of the town disappearing and a huge rip in spacetime disgorging time-travelling knights in armour riding pterosaurs. And that's just for starters...
Paper Girls by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Cliff Chiang is a wild ride into the unknown as our four young protagonists become mixed up in a war between rival factions of time travellers. Frequently thrown into different time periods and meeting future versions of themselves, the girls fight to stay one step ahead of the "Old Timers" who are hunting them to stop them from altering the past. Armed with little more than their own ingenuity, they find themselves catapulted from one surreal scenario to the next, never knowing what lies ahead.
This is also the story of the friendship between the four girls and their individual development, taking in issues of identity, responsibility, race, sexuality, morality and mortality. There is also the timeless dilemma of whether or not the ends justify the means and the quest of finding a meaning for life itself. These serious threads somehow lay comfortably alongside the outlandish narrative without losing any of their emotional punch, and without diluting the fun, adventurous tone.
As with any time travel tale, the issues around being aware of the consequences of your choices are starkly highlighted. Every character is acting according to their own beliefs in the rightness of their actions, based on their own predictions of what the outcome of each option will be. This leaves plenty of room for disagreement, of course: the "Old Timers" want to prevent any interference in the past whereas their younger adversaries see themselves as Robin Hood-style heroes. Then there are the hapless paper girls just trying to survive the madness they have been flung into.
Chiang's art is a perfect balance of fresh and polished, conveying every emotional tone flawlessly. The compositions and designs have a touch of Mœbius-like otherworldliness. Colourist Matt Wilson adds to this dimension with a palette that creates oddly twilight atmospheres to many of the scenes.
Paper Girls is a successful blend of the fantastical with the gritty and benefits from the best of both qualities. The girls' courage, insecurities and imperfections play off each other wonderfully... some of the one-liners had me laughing out loud.
It's a complex, dizzying whole that somehow fits together and works for the reader on many levels. It's an escapist joyride but sneaks in some deep philosophical themes. The woman who invented time travel takes a walk with Mac on the last day of planet Earth's existence and tells her:
"... the amount of time we're each given is irrelevant. It's what we choose to do with every second that counts."
PAPER GIRLS on Image Comics (first issue free)
Zak Webber
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