The Paper Girls: The Complete Story Review

Finally, the entire Eisner Award-winning epic in one complete volume, with a new cover from co-creator CLIFF CHIANG!

Four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls from the year 1988 uncover the most important story of all time. Suburban drama and otherworldly mysteries collide in this critically acclaimed series about nostalgia, first jobs, and the last days of childhood.

Collects PAPER GIRLS #1-30

General Impressions

I might have seen it around before but I only finally read "Paper Girls" because I spotted it on Edelweiss+ after finishing the first volume of Saga, which left me completely aghast and in need of anything by this author (I was planning to mention the adaptation of Y: The Last Man, also by Brian K. Vaughn, which was about to be released but in the space between drafting this review and publishing it, it got cancelled but you can still check out the comics).

While reading the first issue of "Paper Girls" I kept thinking of Stranger things and IT since all three of these stories focus on a group of young kids facing the supernatural, with the adults in their lives being hindrances and often their enemies rather than allies.

Other than the author himself, what attracted me to this comic was that it followed a diverse group of girls battling 1980's small-town sexism and racism at the same time they started to leave childhood into their teenage years. In fact, with this being a story about time travel and its limitations and consequences, the character's age is always at the forefront with teenagers battling adults in a war that spread across time and space and the protagonists discovering all kinds of new things about themselves.

One of my favourite themes across these comics was prejudice and the way it was passed on and rejected across generations and the ensuing fight that came with that struggle. On one hand, the fear of change by older generations, on the other, the rage at injustice by the younger ones.

After a while, I pulled away from the story as it started to get a bit repetitive: they travelled in time and space, there was always a girl missing and another one magically or almost effortlessly had the answers that were needed to rescue their missing member and travel somewhere else.

Even though I did not connect with the plot the way I thought I would, I loved following these four girls and the way they acted, spoke and were drawn, and how they defied stereotypes simply by existing and being their badass selves.

This is not easy to follow or quick story: I doubt anything dealing with time travel is but Paper Girls is on a level of its own for sure: there are scientific and technological advancements, political analysis, social critic, futuristic dialects and slang (that was f***ing GREAT!!),...This is a trip.

Conclusions

I honestly did not know where this story was going but I liked how serious the ending was without taking away all our hope at the end of this deterministic tunnel.

If you like your graphic stories with beautiful, super detailed art, badass heroines and a plot so complex that it will give you a headache you will volunteer for, again and again, this is for you.

Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Image Comics for this DRC.

Rating: 4/5