Review:
One of the great strengths of the third volume on this Eisner Award-winning Paper Girls series was its narrowed focus on the four girls, plus new characters Wari and Qanta. No distractions of the Old Timers vs Teens sub-plots, no wondering about Grand Father and his cathedral of acolytes. Not even any nods to 1980s nostalgia or contemporary realities, as delightful as those references could be.
All those complicating plot elements and more come roaring back in this fourth volume. KJ, Mac, Erin and Tiffany land in Cleveland in the early hours of January 1st, 2000. The creative team of writer Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang does their usual solid job of inserting period references into the dialog and visuals. Through the eyes of our displaced foursome, even a 12-year jump into the future brings them to an amazing place.
Well, except for the giant killer mecha bots battling all around Cleveland, ones that apparently only Tiffany can see. Let's come back to those bots shortly.
Our pre-teens find themselves separated again. This time Tiffany is the one who lands in a different corner of the city. After saving a cop's life, she makes her way to her old home and meets her 24-year-old self, who has made some questionable life choices, ones that young-Tiffany strongly dislikes.
The other three girls set out to solve the question of how Folding locations get secretly coded and communicated to the Teens in their war with the Old-Timers. This leads them to a late-middle-aged woman of questionable sanity, and who has no desire to let them leave freely.
This is the most violent book of the series so far, with our old woman cartoonist blowing away several Old-Timers, who in return fry her to a crisp, along with several others, and these are far from the only deaths and injuries in these pages. And again, there are the battling giant mecha robots throughout.
Vaughan has a clear overall vision for his characters and story, but so many elements collide here that it feels muddled and confusing. And the turn toward giant battle bots is unnecessary, with so many other elements of the war over time between these two sides. In so many places the future tech has been imaginative and well-handled, but these bots turn us toward a sub-genre of sci-fi / fantasy that is not helpful or especially interesting.
Chiang's drawings are up to the task, with light blasts and dripping gore as needed, yet he manages to retain an infusion of beauty throughout. And the subtle touches like Erin crossing herself with holy water before a large confrontation add to the character and insert some measured pacing to this most breakneck of books in the series.
Overall, the story remains solid but needs to gather itself back into a tighter focus for the final couple volumes.
Description:
Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang’s Eisner Award winning series Paper Girls is coming Amazon Prime Video in July 2022!
The mind-bending, time-warping adventure from BRIAN K. VAUGHAN and CLIFF CHIANG continues, as intrepid newspaper deliverer Tiffany is launched from the prehistoric past into the year 2000! In this harrowing version of our past, Y2K was even more of a cataclysm than experts feared, and the only person who can save the future is a 12-year-old girl from 1988.
Collects: issues #16-20
Authors: Brian K Vaughan
Artists: Cliff Chiang, Matthew Wilson
Published By: Image Comics
Published When: April 10, 2018
Parental Rating: Teen
ISBN: 978-1534305106
Pages: 128 pages
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