Paper Girls

Paper Girls
Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, et.al., 2016

Premise: Erin delivers the paper in the early morning, but the morning after Halloween isn’t a good time to be out on the streets. There’s teenagers causing mischief, cops looking for teens to bust, and… monsters from another time? Four paper girls team up in this comic that’s part horror, part adventure, and totally 80s. Collects Paper Girls #1-5

I was really intrigued by an excerpt from this book, and of course I’ve enjoyed Vaughan’s work before, so I snapped this up in trade.

I really like how firmly set in its time period it is. The fashions, the (offensive) language, the technology, everything is right. The plot is surreal, mysterious, and potentially really screwed up - so basically what I expected. The dialogue of some of the antagonists is very cleverly written.

Erin, KJ, Tiffany, and Mackenzie are an appropriately diverse group for a piece written today and loosely inspired by the boys-adventure movies of the 80s. Their characters are sketched out quickly but well, and the art style is a perfect match for the writing.

I’ve appreciated Chang’s art before, but I loved it here. The color pallette works perfectly to build the tone, and all the little details are right to build the world.

Overall I enjoyed this quite a bit, I felt it hit the important emotional beats and made me curious to what will happen next. However, there is nothing resolved by the end of Issue 5, just more questions. For all that I did like it, I’ll probably wait for reviews to help me decide whether the story is worth it to keep reading.

4 Stars - A Very Good Book

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