Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Paper Girls #1
Image Comics
Vaughan, Chiang, Wilson & Fletcher
"Paper Girls" is a forty-page, three-dollar comic book that provides a fast-paced and intriguing initial offering. The comic focuses on four paper girls (this is the late 1980s when people still got newspapers and they were delivered to their doors in the wee hours of the morning) as they deliver their papers on the morning after Halloween. The book is a great read as it introduces the girls, brings them together and then sticks a heavy mystery in at the end. The book boasts some great artwork that helps to drive the tension. Overall, this is a comic that shouldn't be passed up. I highly recommend this.
The comic follows along with Erin as she wakes up and gets ready for her paper route. She gets confronted by a few teenage holdovers from the night before and things look like they might turn ugly until three other girls show up. Erin quickly gets to know the others and they team up to complete their routes together to avoid more confrontations with crazies still out from the night before.
Eventually they get involved with three mysterious figures. Things don't go well and the final pages bring out plenty of questions to carry the book into the next issue. The cliffhanger is very, very strange.
The book is a great read because the characters are likable and the story they are in doesn't feel dated despite being set in the 1980s. The book takes a normal situation and throws a ton of oddities at it by the comic's end. The book struggles with giving a strong voice to the four main girls. For the most part, even the street tough kid has a very similar voice to the rest of the cast by the issue's end. The difficult balance is that the comic moves quickly, which is a good thing, but limits the amount the reader can get to know the characters because of the lack of dialogue. Seems like a tough balance.
The artwork is wonderful. The pencils, coloring and shading capture the mood very well. The details in the characters help to express the drama and the build up to the ending. The comic also has a lot of creativity when dealing with the science-fiction elements and dream sequences. I loved the art as a companion to the story.
"Paper Girls" is a great first issue. The story moves quickly through the forty-page comic book. The opening issue introduces the four paper girls and puts them into a couple of crazy situations by the end of the issue. The artwork is very strong as it sets a great mood and provides a lot of creative details on some of the strange elements. The minor drawback is that I found the four girls to all have the same voice by the issue's end. There just wasn't enough dialogue to define them uniquely. This is a great comic to pick up this week. I highly recommend this comic.
4.5 out of 5 Geek Goggles
