Review by Ian Keogh
When filming began on the Paper Girls TV show, Image belatedly issued this bulky paperback Complete Story.
It’s a clever, complicated story, extraordinarily well drawn and theoretically aimed at a young adult audience, but enjoyment is provided for any age of comic reader. It doesn’t entirely applear that way at the start, though, when Brian K. Vaughan seems to have gone for box ticking with the four twelve year old girls forming the main cast. Going forward, it actually matters little that Erin is the innocent kid, Mac the tough kid, KJ the Jewish kid and Tiff the Afro-American kid as what they become involved in prompts growth for all, transcending the easy labels first applied.
During the 1980s the four girls are threatened when delivering papers, seek refuge, and are pulled into an amazing journey through time where they’re confronted with all sorts of versions of themselves. Vaughan layers mystery on mystery and provides very few answers until the final third, so Paper Girls is best experienced as a phenomenal adventure only revealed to the girls themselves in snippets. Anyone attempting to second guess Vaughan will merely solicit frustration, and will likely be wrong about everything.
However, Vaughan is just half the story, and Cliff Chiang’s extraordinary versatility brings everything to life in luscious detail, with the colours of Matt Wilson supplying the final appeal. Some artists relish the technology and their people aren’t well formed, others skimp on the backgrounds while concentrating on the people. Chiang delivers everything, with the thought behind the designs and storytelling obvious, and as at home with dinosaurs as he is with the holographic future. There’s no weakness about the art, and every page looks a treat.
Dinosaurs? Holographic future? That’s because Paper Girls becomes a chase back and forth through time. The girls just want to get home, not really concerned they’ve upset a powerful organisation in the future, but this about more than an adventure. The girls know each other by sight when things kick off, but the best relationship at the beginning is casual acquaintance, and Vaughan captures the subsequent bonding, although that’s hastened by the girls being the only fixed point in their new existence.
Anyone who read the story as monthly comics will surely have been really frustrated by the masterful cliffhanger chapter endings. From there it progressed to six paperbacks (see individual reviews starting with Paper Girls 1), and the story was then repackaged split in half over two hardcovers. This, however, is the best way to read it, from cover to cover in one session if possible. That way Vaughan’s excellent foreshadowing is more obvious, rather than making it seem as if a couple of events have come from nowhere.
In any format, though, Paper Girls is ambitious, charming and compelling. That’s not just for young adults. The adult notification, by the way, is earned by the occasional bout of swearing rather than anything more questionable.
