Paper Girls Series (So Far) Review
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Cliff Chiang
Colours: Matt Wilson
Letters: Jared K. Fletcher
Publisher: Image Comics
A review by Stephanie Pouliotte
There’s something about the 80s that makes it the perfect setting for eerie monster stories. If the recent success of Stranger Things tells us anything, it’s that people are craving the nostalgic feel and bizarre, creepy tales that recall the greats like Stephen King and H.G. Wells. Brian K. Vaughan’s new ongoing series Paper Girls does just that, following a gang of twelve-year-old newspaper delivery girls who, in the early hours after Halloween of 1988, discover a futuristic device and are pulled into an interdimensional war of the worlds. The series won the Eisner for Best New Series and Best Penciler/Inker and is an absolutely stunning meld of sci-fi, horror, and paranormal mystery that draws heavily on the 80s influence in the first volume, only to propel the protagonists into 2016 for the next leg of the story. It’s a coming of age tale that juxtaposes the past, the present, and the future in a wonderfully nightmarish and mysterious sci-fi adventure.
The first thing that drew me to Paper Girls was the fact that it’s a story about preteen girls with a gritty and realistic tone. This isn’t the Baby-Sitters Club. It’s something I’ve come to expect from Vaughan’s writing. His characterization has a frank truthfulness to it, especially when writing female characters. These girls are latchkey kid; riding their bikes before dawn, smoking cigarettes, and standing up to teenagers. They are also a reflection of the time they lived in, going through a transitional age when kids begin to reach beyond themselves, when they begin to see a darker side to the world. This is in part represented by the disturbing and horrific events these twelve year olds are made to face, but it’s most strongly conveyed in the characters themselves. Vaughan doesn’t try to smooth out their edges. He uses them to show a side of the late 80s that is both honest and unsettling in its own right.
Mac is one of the more outspoken and rebellious characters. She protects her crew fiercely and constantly pushes the boundaries of authority, fighting against what society expects of her. She’s their fearless leader, but she’s also still a fragment of that world. In the first issue she uses a homophobic slur to taunt some teenage boys picking on Erin, also referring to them as “AIDS patients” — a move that caused some comic shops run by openly gay owners to pull the issue from the shelves. Mac is protecting Erin (who admonishes Mac’s use of the term soon after), but she’s also exerting her independence in an uncomfortable way for readers, one that is both alienating and upsetting. For many fans this latest incident was the final straw, accusing Vaughan of being crass and using slurs to appear edgy, especially since the slur was used on a full page panel where Mac, Tiffany, and TJ are first introduced. Personally, I didn’t get that feeling at all. Mac’s homophobia is a part of her character, something that resurfaces a few times throughout the story, and the term she uses would have definitely been used by kids during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Her friend’s call her out on it to a certain extent, but not quickly enough for many readers who’ve dropped the title.
“A lot of readers found that horrifying, rightfully so. It is something that I look back on, with my own childhood, with horror. The ubiquity of how casually kids used that word and unthinkingly.” – Brian K. Vaughan
It certainly isn’t portrayed as positive behaviour, and I think this aspect of her character may play a larger role in the story — especially with the teenage time-travelers, one of whom was gay and responded to Mac’s audible disgust by saying: “Don’t worry about it. You guys are from an effed-up time.”
Paper Girls explores themes of teenage freedom, disillusionment, and the disintegration of trust between adults and youth through the lens of the late 1980s, placing our childhood nostalgia at odds with our current moral principles. It’s a comic about kids, and it’s unflinching in how it presents their experiences because homophobia, alcoholism, and abuse affect kids as much as adults. Vaughan doesn’t shy away from showing that, and it’s in part what makes Paper Girls such a genuinely engaging comic.
Paper Girls is much more than just an 80s throw back. The end of the first volume launches the girls into a familiar future where Erin encounters her 40-year-old self and is disappointed to learn that she still works for the Cleveland Preserver, in the same small town, 28 years later. The passage of time and the existential crisis of aging are the underpinning themes of the story. While overtly embodied by the interdimentional war that seems to pit the past and the future against one another, the girls also have to face some hard truths about growing up throughout their journey. Tiffany has an identity crisis of sorts when she is forced to relive her past through a monster’s psychic attack, watching herself obsessively play Arkanoid on her NES for months on end. This leads her to conclude that she had ‘basically wasted [her] entire existence’, a pretty heavy realization for a twelve year old. It doesn’t feel like forced maturity though, it feels sincerely depressing and also a bit hyperbolic considering that she is only a kid. Vaughan plays a lot with the idea of kids dealing with adult problems and situations. It’s a quintessential part of coming of age stories, but he does it in a way that resonates with our generation and questions how we reflect on our own past.
Cliff Chiang’s artwork perfectly complements this weirdly dark sci-fi story, it’s not surprising that Paper Girls won the Eisner for Best Penciller/Inker this year. He captures the nostalgia of small-town America in the 80s and twists it with futuristic elements straight out of War of the Worlds. His physical characterization is phenomenal; he really captures the individuality of these smart-mouthed grunge girls. The story has a fairly rapid pace. Vaughan loves throwing the reader into a chaotic, otherworldly story without much context for what’s happening, but Chiang’s panel layout builds up great suspense at key moments and slows us down when we need it. Matt Wilson’s colouring is easily the most striking visual aspect of the comic. The signature retro colours of the eighties are blended into strange fuchsia skies and the purple tones of magic hour that gives Paper Girls the distinctly eerie atmosphere that I absolutely love.
The Verdict
Buy It! Paper Girls is the gritty sci-fi story that I’ve been waiting to read for a long time. A coming of age that goes beyond just being a gender-swapped Stand By Me and honestly tackles some of the darker aspects of growing up as girls. I’ve always been drawn to Vaughan’s work in part because of how he writes female characters.* In Paper Girls, he writes them honestly and with nuance, they aren’t merely defined by the role they fill or by their romantic relationships. But what I appreciate even more is that he doesn’t draw attention to it. He doesn’t create his characters solely to be a refutation of our ideas of gender, to point to them and say “see what I did there?” He just wants to write about a group of girls without having to justify it. He definitely makes the reader face some uncomfortable truths about the past and about society, reconstructing a more faithful ode to the last days of childhood. It’s a story about kids, it’s a story about girls, and it’s also a true story. He simply writes real characters and that is honestly extremely refreshing.
*I highly recommend Y: The Last Man and Saga, both written by Vaughan with amazing female characters. They were drawn by the talented female artists Pia Guerra and Fiona Staples respectively.
