Tag Archives: KJ

Sep 12 2018

Time Travel is a Threat, Not a Savior in Paper Girls 24

By Spencer Irwin

Paper Girls 24

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

The cast of Paper Girls continually look to time travel for salvation, as a cure-all to whatever ails them. The problem is that time travel caused almost all of their problems in the first place, and only threatens to cause more in the future. Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, and Matthew Wilson make this clearer than ever in Paper Girls 24, an issue that paints time travel as something that’s actively destructive and malicious. Continue reading →

Jul 10 2018

The Virtues and Dangers of Information in Paper Girls 22

By Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Like with most of Brian K. Vaughan’s books, one of Paper Girls’ best qualities is its letter column. Issue 22’s column ends on one of the more interesting letters the series has received; Vaughan’s avatar, Dash-Dash Dot, rightly calls out the writer for his regressive politics and use of cringeworthy expressions like “beta male,” but as much as I hate to admit it, I also found the writer echoing some criticisms I myself have stated on occasion, particularly his assertion that “twenty issues in, and [the Paper Girls] (and the reader) still don’t know what is happening, or why, or what to do about it.”

I haven’t been shy in calling Paper Girls out on its nearly impenetrable lore and over-arcing plot myself — thankfully, the characters, art, and the individual stories of each arc are strong enough to make Paper Girls a must-read comic despite those larger flaws. But this most recent arc has made it more clear than ever that Vaughan — and Paper Girls itself — has a complicated relationship with information, and that no matter how frustratingly paced its doling out of information may sometimes be, it’s a deliberate, meaningful choice. Continue reading →

Jun 11 2018

Paper Girls 21: Discussion

by Ryan Mogge & Spencer Irwin

Paper Girls 21

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

slim-banner

Ryan M: One of the best things about living in 2018 is the decentralization of knowledge. With the internet, you are a few queries away from knowing just about anything. There are, of course, the downsides, like I now have the power to use WedMD to diagnose myself with chronic illnesses or see evidence of the good time my friends were having last night while I watched 100% Hotter and diagnosed myself with chronic illnesses. Despite those minor dangers, though, there is so much to appreciate about how much we can know in moments. The titular Paper Girls come from a world where news and information travels manually, literally carried to your door in a finite form. Throughout the series, they have been at an information disadvantage, constantly trying to play catch up to understand what’s happening. For the first time, in Paper Girls 21, the advancements of the future may be a savior. Continue reading →

Nov 2 2017

Paper Girls 17: Discussion

by Drew Baumgartner & Patrick Ehlers

Paper Girls 17

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

slim-banner

Drew: Brian K. Vaughan series are hard to pin down, generically. I mean, they obviously fall into big capital-G genres like “sci-fi” or “space opera,” but the list of specific influences — which Vaughan often name-checks — can shift from issue to issue. Case in point, Paper Girls has sprinted through dozens of generic touchstones in its 17 issues. And yet, I’ve been holding onto its starting point in the Spielberg/Columbus-style suburbia of the late ’80s as some kind of essential component of its DNA, even as the series hasn’t been in that setting since its very first arc. While some of the girls may still be in that head-space (Mac sure seems to be), they’re traversing worlds that have entirely different points of reference (both for the people who live in those worlds, and the stories we tell about them), which seems to be leaving an impression on them. Continue reading →

Oct 11 2017

The Same World, but Two Different Realities in Paper Girls 16

By Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

One of my most vivid memories is a day in first grade when we had a substitute teacher. I opened a little tupperware container full of alphabet flash cards and it fell on the floor, scattering the cards all over. When I started to pick them up, the teacher came over and yelled at me for “crawling around on the floor,” wouldn’t listen to a word of my protest, and sent me to detention. The flash cards remained on the floor for the rest of the day.

When you’re young, it often feels like you and adults live in two different worlds, but that specific scenario was one where I quite literally felt like the teacher and I were seeing and experiencing two very different realities. That rift between generations is illustrated just as literally by Cliff Chiang, Brian K. Vaughan, and Matthew Wilson in Paper Girls 16. Continue reading →

Jun 14 2017

Paper Girls 15

Today, Patrick and Ryan M are discussing Paper Girls 15, originally released June 8, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Patrick: I’ve always loved the idiom “snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.” It implies such a rough and determined win against nearly insurmountable odds. Like, think about how much courage it takes to snatch anything out of a pair of motherfucking jaws, never mind that the jaws evidently belong to the personification of “defeat.” It’s dramatic, heroic, hopeful. But it’s seldom something we see in the work of Brian K. Vaughan. Closing out the third story arc, Paper Girls 15 gives us a prime example of the exact opposite — defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Every act of bravery is punished with increasingly perplexing consequences, until the very nature of the Girls’ time travel is thrown into question.

Continue reading →

Apr 12 2017

Paper Girls 13

Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing Paper Girls 13, originally released April 5, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Spencer: The best sci-fi creators find a way to distill their grand ideas and concepts down to situations and emotions their audience can connect with and relate to. Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang have been wizards at this throughout Paper Girls, using their story to explore themes as weighty as prejudice and generation gaps and as mundane as family and growing up. Issue 13 distills that idea even further, slowing their ongoing story to a crawl and instead using the journey to naturally draw out the cast’s view of themselves, their families, and growing up in general. The result is never anything less than completely engaging. Continue reading →

Feb 8 2017

Paper Girls 11

paper-girls-11

Today, Patrick and Spencer are discussing Paper Girls 11, originally released February 1, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

suck·er punch

noun

1. an unexpected punch or blow.

Patrick: There’s not much that happens in Paper Girls that is expected, so it might be kind of hard to notice when the series is actually delivering unexpected blows. I mean, when you’re tumbling through time and space, what actually counts as “unexpected” anymore? That could be a tension killer, but under the measured eyes of Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, a constant stream of sucker punches becomes an unsettling canvas. Continue reading →

Sep 14 2016

Paper Girls 9

paper-girls-9Today, Spencer and Drew are discussing Paper Girls 9, originally released September 7th, 2016. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Spencer: There’s still much we don’t know about the world of Paper Girls, and despite Clone-Erin’s assurances on the first page, issue 9 doesn’t even begin to answer all our questions; what it does, though, is further dig into the “kids vs. adults” conflict apparently brewing in Clone-Erin’s future. How Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, and Matthew Wilson do so is fascinating; instead of going into a detailed flashback or history of the conflict, they simply recreate it amongst their own cast. Continue reading →

Dec 9 2015

Paper Girls 3

paper girls 3

Today, Ryan D. and Michael are discussing Paper Girls 3, originally released December 2nd, 2015.

“Don’t trust anybody over 30.”

-Jack Weinberg

Ryan D: The Free Speech Movement, originally born out of the turmoil roiling in the belly of an America committed to both the Vietnam War and the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement, gave youths protesting a mantra regarding who is trustworthy and who is not. The original quote, spoken first in 1964 when an interviewer accused Weinberg and the Movement of being backed by Communists or some other nefarious group, asserts that people over a certain age always have an agenda. Though Paper Girls takes place twenty years after the FSM, this most recent issue’s reveal proves that the saying holds true, even in the far future, or alternate universes, or wherever it is that is invading the Earth in this ripping read. Continue reading →