(courtesy Image Comics)
On the face of it, time travel seems like one of the most fun idea out there.
What’s not to like about the chance to zap anywhere in history and see dinosaurs or kill Hitler or see what the Earth looks like in 1.2 billion years?
But as story after story has reminded us, whether it’s on a TV show, in a movie, book (think the recent The Ministry of Time) or graphic novel, racing back and forth through time comes with a great deal of risk, not just because of the limits that physics imposes but because people being people have a way of taking something that’s potentially boundlessly good and making it, well, not good.
Case very much in point are the final two volumes in the Paper Girls series by Brian K. Vaughan (writer) and Cliff Chiang (artist) – with colouring by Matt Wilson and lettering by Jared K. Fletcher – where the four eponymous protagonists of the series are stuck in times past and future but not, alas, in 1988 Stony Stream (Cleveland), Ohio where they started this whole benighted adventure.
Actually, scrub that; what Mac, K. J. (aka Kaje), Erin and Tiffany have gone through in the previous four volumes (read reviews of volumes one and two and also three and four), while a thrill for us to read, is anything but an adventure with the four girls, who have barely become a friendship unit when they are effectively kidnapped by weird alien-esque forces who turn out to be from the future and part of a great battle between Old Timers who want to leave the timeline unchanged and the new guard, who are actually young, fighting to change things so that can create a utopia here on Earth (quite when that is is another matter entirely).
While both are ostensibly committed to not screwing things up with time travel shenanigans, that’s effectively what they’ve done, coming close to ruining not only the lives of the titular girls but all kinds of people throughout history from the earlier cave people eon through to a far-future Cleveland which looks all shiny and pretty but which harbours a dark soul.
(courtesy Image Comics)
See, not so much fun now, is it?
Where Paper Girls really succeeds in these two volumes is by cleverly and cleanly wrapping things up without everything feeling it’s done with two neat a bow.
Sure, there is resolution, and identities such as that of the “Grand Father” are revealed, but not all the endings are entirely happy with the big question at the heart of the series – can you ask your fate or are you designed to live it out, come what may? – percolating away right until the end.
Full to the brim with a pedal-to-the-metal which absolutely gives no quarter while still magically leaving room for moments of real emotional intimacy and reflection – it may read and look like a great big blockbuster but Paper Girls has a ridiculous amount of meaningful heart at its core – and alive with an expansive imagination that absolutely takes your breath away, Paper Girls is one of those sci-fi graphic novel series that well and truly delivers on its premise.
It began with a terrifying but compellingly readable bang and it continues on with that momentum in volumes five and six, with the technicolour artwork working in perfect lockstep with an emotionally resonant narrative that has all the big and epic bells and whistles but which somehow manages to capture your soul tight at the same time.
Paper Girls is honestly one of those rare graphic novels that is the total package, and that includes how well it sticks a landing which gives you the satisfaction of a happy ending of sorts without sacrificing the gritty, enthralling darkness of everything that has gone before it.
Vaughan and Chiang deserve all the praise they get for not only dreaming up an outrageously exciting premise but making the most of it, taking readers on a journey through time that might’ve been fun if it weren’t for the mass of terrifying consequences that come from people not playing nicely with a fairly impactful and damaging, if guided by the wrong philosophy, technology.
Thee are a ton of big ideas and huge emotional and physical landscapes filling Paper Girls, especially in its final two volumes which answer all the big questions we have, get our heroes home relatively safely (but not scot free, sadly), deliver action on an epic scale while deep diving into questions of friendship, belief and why we do what we do.
It’s impressive stuff and having it end as well as it does is a huge treat, proving that it is possible to take an audacious idea, execute on it with writing brio and artistic flair, and really go to a futuristic town with it where life and love and friendship wins out but not without a lot of cost along the way for just about everyone involved.
Great news! Paper Girls is now a series streaming on Prime Video.