Review: Paper Girls, Vol. 1

Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Being a girl in a boy's world can be tough. But when newspaper delivery turns into fighting for your life, you'll do whatever needs to be done to survive. Paper Girls Vol. 1 is a comic that takes a lot of twists and turns that you never see coming.

The artwork is pretty great in Paper Girls Vol. 1, but it doesn't do much to help the plot (if you can actually find one). The book's blurb is extremely misleading. I wanted to read this for the “nostalgia, first jobs, and the last days of childhood” that is promised, but the only part of the blurb that actually ended up being a majority of this book was the “otherworldly mysteries” it mentioned in passing.

The plot is mixed up with newspaper delivery girls getting a new friend and immediately taking her under their wing. Once it's established they fight through weirdos on the early morning streets on a regular basis, they are bombarded with warring alien groups (silver-clad Rastafarians against teenage mutant ninjas), while at the same time everyone else on earth seems to have disappeared. There is a lot confusion throughout the volume, and the only point that it gets interesting is on the last page. It's a nice setup for a second volume, but if it resembles the first, I probably wouldn't bother with it.

Oh, and don't forget the pterodactyls. Yeah, there are pterodactyls, too.

*Received a copy of this book through NetGalley

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