User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
(A-) 83% | Very Good
Notes: Higher gear, obscure made clear, rock 'em sock 'em action, an urgent plot, close shaves a lot, and soured interactions.
Rating: really liked it
oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best graphic novel 2018! what will happen?things actually make sense in this volume!
review to come!
Rating: really liked it
PS: I just saw the first episode of the first season of the Amazon Prime production of Paper Girls, and liked it very much! I'm in!
THE END OF THE WORLD?!
Y2K Insanity!
Will computers melt down?
Will society?
--Time Magazine cover, January 18, 1999
Our favorite girls from 1988 are still in the future in this one. And it is a blast. And occasionally awkward, and sometimes moving. Paper Girls is a sci-fi/time travel comic series, folks, so you must expect things that come with the genre; for instance, one of the girls traveling 12 years into the future, Tiffany, meets her future husband. . . and of course, her future self). So, if you have a chance to save (or find a way to avoid!) the weird guy doing ‘shrooms that you seem destined to be with, would you do it?
“Charlotte, meet Tiffany. Both of them.”
Ha! Good, right!? [oh, don’t be mad about a little ol’ spoiler here; this is a time traveler story involving three girls! What did you expect they would find in the future, just self-driving cars!? Have you never seen Peggy Sue Gets Married (1986) or Back to the Future?! (1985)]
If you are future Tiffany, you get fun questions like this from your younger self about how to manage a crisis: “But what would you have done in 1988?”
There’s a cute bit in here about a cartoonist—the above-referenced Charlotte, who places clues about time travel in her strips. “Frankie Tomatah” is the name of a comic strip, and our protagonists just have to go visit said cartoonist who created the strip to see if they can get help moving back to 1988.
Eighties references as usual abound, and are sprinkled throughout this goofy ice cream plot: “Tactical nukes”? 12 Monkeys? The Pontiac Fiero?
And the cartoonist tells them:
“Come with me if you want to live.”
[Oh, don’t TELL me you have to GOOGLE this?! What has happened to your memory? Stolen by an evil spirit?! By Arnold himself?]
You also get for your money in this volume battling ‘bots, that wacky sci fi dimension of the story that continues to crazy-up the wider story of some very different paper girls, who manage to become friends, confronting their futures.
But it’s not all giggles. We get to compare what eighties worries were like compared to our present (or other new century) concerns, such as 9/11 or Oklahoma City. The series makes it clear that nothing less than the future of human civilization is at stake as we face the future, and not just—as important as this obviously is--future mates.
I saw a couple critical Goodreads reviews and have to say: You don’t like this because it is over the top??! That’s the POINT of eighties sci fi time travel entertainment, darlin’! Get over it, relax, and just have fun. You’ll get killer ‘bots AND see how two of these adorable eighties friends deal with revelations of their friend’s sexual identity. Thrills AND tears!
And the neon colors! Matt Wilson has made his place in comics history with this distinctive coloring, no question. I wavered in my commitment to this series by rating volume initially three only three stars. I’m back, waaaaay back, to 1988! Or wait, 2000, or. . .
REMEMBER:
Turn your computer off
Before midnight
On 12/31/1999
--Warning sticker from Best Buy, circa 1999
Rating: really liked it
Things are beginning to click into place within this comic and I am really enjoying it. I love how bad-ass each girl is and I like how different they all are. I think the story is really cool and I love the illustrations and the colours. I'm really looking forward to the next issue but I'm sad I will have to wait so long! I would definitely recommend this. It may be a bit confusing at the start, but once you get to vol 2 or 3, it is so worth it!
Rating: really liked it
A five issue series smack-down that looks at just how much we got it wrong with the Millennial Bug as our Paper Girls stray into the year 2000. The whole generational cross-over language is wonderfully created by Brian K. Vaughan, as is this mystery, which I am finally getting a better understanding of... after all there is only one reality. Despite the art, which I can just about tolerate this is turning out to be another Brian K. Vaughan monster hit for me!! 8 out of 12
Rating: really liked it
Now we're headed to the night the dreaded Y2K was supposed to hit. I remember that night as the New Year's Eve the IT staff had to work all night for absolutely no reason because very, very little actually went wrong. There's a lot of great little inside jokes as the girls run around town while trying to avoid getting stomped on by giant time-travelling robots. In addition to the Goonies-like fun, we actually begin to see how this time travel war fits together. Cliff Chiang and Matt Wilson are killing it on the art front.
Rating: really liked it
This volume was much better than the previous one and it makes so much more sense. There are still so many unanswered questions and we know so little that is going on. Brian K. Vaughan is a big tease. He knows how to keep you waiting for more answer and while he gives you a sip, he is setting up more questions.
We meet up with the whole group finally in the year 2000. There are giant robots fighting over the city, but no one can see them but one of the girls. No one else knows what the noise or damage is from. We do find out they are basically time bandets.
I'm up for another volume. I wonder how long the library is going to be closed. I have 4 more graphic novels and then I'm done for a while and I can catch up on my Gone with the Wind book.
Rating: really liked it
2020 re-read:
I think this is actually better than my initial review suggests. Yes, the plot doesn't have a lot of forward momentum in this one. But I think it actually made sense for Vaughan to not throw a lot of new developments at us, and instead give a few answers to some of the questions the previous volumes brought up. Also, nice setting. And giant robots!
********
2018 review:
Another fun volume!
The girls turn up in the year 2000.
When flat screens weren’t really flat, but reasonably priced.
And people were angsting about the world coming to an end.
But hey, at least back then personal computers looked really cool.
It’s tangerine, sweetie. Tangerine.
Plot-wise there’s not a lot happening here. The girls get separated once again. Tiffany meets her future self and some things that don’t really belong in the year 2000. As far as I remember.
The other girls meet a cartoonist whose strips hide some clues for time travellers. And she also seems to be a fan of a certain movie that involves time travel as well.
There’s a war raging between those guys who want to preserve the timeline and the others who are in favor of change. And somehow the girls are in the thick of it once again.
But we don’t make much progress in this volume. The fun lies in the details.
And in the commentary on what different generations worried about, regarding their present or their future. With people from the past, present and future, uhm, present here, this gets quite interesting.
I still love Cliff Chiang’s art and especially Matt Wilson’s coloring. The concept of this series is also very appealing to me. Now, if Vaughan would bring his A game this could actually become one of my favorites. The different perspectives of our four heroines compared to the people living in the decades they’re visiting is the most interesting part of the story so far.
The Times They Are A-Changin'(view spoiler)
[ 
(hide spoiler)]2019 Hugo nominee for Best Graphic Story.
____________________________
2019 Hugo Award Finalists
Best Novel•
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal• Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
• Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
• Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
• Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
• Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
Best Novella•
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells• Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
• Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
• Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson
• The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
Best Novelette•
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again by Zen Cho (Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog)• The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections by Tina Connolly (Tor.com)
• Nine Last Days on Planet Earth by Daryl Gregory (Tor.com)
• The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander (Tor.com)
• The Thing About Ghost Stories by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny Magazine)
• When We Were Starless by Simone Heller (Clarkesworld Magazine)
Best Short Story• The Court Magician by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed Magazine)
• The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society by T. Kingfisher (Uncanny Magazine)
• The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington by P. Djèlí Clark (Fireside Magazine)
• STET by Sarah Gailey (Fireside Magazine)
• The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat by Brooke Bolander (Uncanny Magazine)
•
A Witch’s Guide To Escape: A Practical Compendium Of Portal Fantasies by Alix E. Harrow (Apex Magazine)Best Series• The Centenal Cycle by Malka Older
• The Laundry Files by Charles Stross
• Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee
• The October Daye Series by Seanan McGuire
• The Universe of Xuya by Aliette de Bodard
•
Wayfarers by Becky ChambersBest Related Work•
Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works• Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee
• The Hobbit Duology (a documentary in three parts), written and edited by Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan
• An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards 1953-2000 by Jo Walton
• The Mexicanx Initiative Experience at Worldcon 76 by Julia Rios, Libia Brenda, Pablo Defendini, and John Picacio
• Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. Le Guin with David Naimon
Best Graphic Story• Abbott, written by Saladin Ahmed, art by Sami Kivelä, colors by Jason Wordie, letters by Jim Campbell
• Black Panther: Long Live the King, written by Nnedi Okorafor and Aaron Covington, art by André Lima Araújo, Mario Del Pennino, and Tana Ford
•
Monstress, Volume 3: Haven, written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda• On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
• Paper Girls, Volume 4 , written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Cliff Chiang, colors by Matt Wilson, letters by Jared K. Fletcher
• Saga, Volume 9, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples
Best Art Book•
The Book of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition illustrated by Charles Vess, written by Ursula K. Le Guin• Daydreamer’s Journey: The Art of Julie Dillon by Julie Dillon
• Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History by Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer
• Spectrum 25: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, editor John Fleskes
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – The Art of the Movie by Ramin Zahed
• Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth, editor Catherine McIlwaine
Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book•
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt; Macmillan Children’s Books)• The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton (Freeform / Gollancz)
• The Cruel Prince by Holly Black (Little, Brown / Hot Key Books)
• Dread Nation by Justina Ireland (Balzer + Bray)
• The Invasion by Peadar O’Guilin (David Fickling Books / Scholastic)
• Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman (Random House / Penguin Teen)
Rating: really liked it
This series is wild. I have no idea what’s going on half the time but I kinda just don’t care. It’s utterly bizarre, filled with badass girls and a plot that’s here, there and everywhere. The art style is gorgeous and it’s always so much fun to read. I feel at though things slowly started to come together in this volume but I’m still waiting for a moment of total clarity. It’s definitely not without its faults but overall, I’m loving this series and am consistently left wanting more.
Rating: really liked it
After escaping pre-historic times, the Paper Girls find themselves separated again as they must traverse Y2K searching for their lost companion, while also making sure not to get stepped on by the two giant time-traveling kaiju robots duking it out above town…
Oh man, I loved this. The highlights of this series have been the girl’s reactions to all the different times, but this was easily the best of those. And even if it does get serious at points, I love how fun this book always feels for the most part. It’s such a light read and I find myself flying through issue after issue faster than even I would like. Recommended to any and everyone who reads comics. I think this is one of my favorite works from BKV yet.
Rating: really liked it
[ including adult jahpo, the infant they saved in the past!! wow. (hide spoiler)]
Rating: really liked it
I take it back! I don’t like Mac’s character anymore. I could not deal with her being so rude and terrible in this book.
We have a character coming out in this book, and different reactions to their revelation of identity. And that does mean we are getting some LGBT+ rep. There are some homophobic comments, so be ready for that too! I appreciate how the plot is still firmly focused on the science-fiction, but these modern day relevant topics are coming up.
At long last we are finally getting some answers in this one! Finally, everything that has happened makes sense. Now I am motivated and intrigued enough to continue. It really shouldn’t have taken until the fourth volume for us to get to this point though.
The artwork and palette was okay in this one.
These books are out of my comfort zone. They are weird and random. I think I like them anyway.
This review and others can originally be found on Olivia's Catastrophe: https://oliviascatastrophe.com/2019/0...
Rating: really liked it
While sometimes difficult to follow with its constantly changing cast and setting, the dynamic of chaos theory makes sense in a story of warring time travelers. Meanwhile there’s “some” character development, and bounds of coming-of-age, 2000s nostalgia, and sci-fi grandiloquence. Part of the appeal is to know where this is even going, ending on yet another cliff hanger.
Rating: really liked it
I really enjoyed this volume!
Things finally begin to make sense.
We get some explanations, and a new character which I liked and wish to read more about.
I wish I can read the next one... I HATE waiting for unfinished series. 💔
Rating: really liked it
This series is getting weirder and weirder - and better and better. Though this one ends on a horrible cliffhanger xD
