Paper Girls Delivers Complex Characters Along With Time Travel Excitement
If you are familiar with the work of comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan, you probably know him from the title he co-created with artist Fiona Staples, the wildly inventive science fantasy series Saga. You may not know of the 30-issue series Paper Girls, a slightly more grounded work than Saga, from Vaughan and artist Cliff, Chiang, with colorist Matt Wilson and letterer and designer Jared K. Fletcher.
Paper Girls got a live-action adaptation from Amazon Prime, which premiered today with all eight episodes available to stream at once. Below is my spoiler-free review of the Prime series — does it deliver?
Set in the early morning after Halloween 1988 (OK, it starts at that point in time), Paper Girls tells the story of four 12-year-old girls who are all out at 4 a.m. delivering the Cleveland daily paper to residents of the fictional Cleveland suburb of Stony Stream. Because of some last-minute Halloween shenanigans by some local troublemakers, the girls get caught up in a very serious conflict between what seems to be opposing factions of time travelers. In the course of their adventures, Erin, Tiffany, KJ and Mac find out things about their futures that deeply affect who they are as tweens.
I haven’t read the comic series but based on what I have read in other articles and on Wikipedia, and based on images of Cliff Chiang’s art, I can say it looks like Amazon Studio’s budget for Paper Girls didn’t allow for some of the more out-there elements of the comic to make it into the live action adaptation — at least so far. While watching the preview screening of the series, my only negative from a budget standpoint was that some of the special effects and set design seemed to be less than spectacular. But still both aspects were enjoyable, if reminiscent of Doctor Who. It wasn’t until doing my research for this article that I thought “Where is that amazing character?” or “Why doesn’t this person look like they did in the comic?”
However, special effects and wild costume and set designs aren’t what makes the series the special thing that it is. That honor goes to the character writing and the very personal stories, enveloped in an interesting time travel mystery. Core to that is, of course, the four leads. Riley Lai Nelet (Erin), Camryn Jones (Tiffany), Fina Strazza (KJ), and Sofia Rosinsky (Mac) all bring some of the best work from young actors working today. Seriously, DC, if you plan on a Teen Titans live action movie, here’s a great start. Similarly, Marvel, if you need to round out the cast of the yet-to-be-announced Young Avengers, look no further.
The rest of the cast is excellent, particularly Ali Wong as older Erin, and Adina Porter as the main antagonist, the Prioress. I know Porter mostly from True Blood where she played Tara’s alcoholic, religious nut job mother Lettie Mae. I had no idea she could portray such cold menace as she does with the Prioress. Porter makes the Prioress one of the best antagonists in the past few years.
I say antagonist and not villain, because as is typical with Vaughan, the standard hero or villain archetype just doesn’t apply to most of his characters. All of them have complex motivations or develop them over time. The series writers, including initial co-showrunners Christopher C. Rogers and Stephany Folsom, do a great job translating that complexity into the live-action series.
The music is good, although the overall sound can be a bit muddy at times. The needle drop song choices range from almost cliche to surprisingly creative.
Paper Girls has good pacing, and the slow moments keep you engaged because of how good the character writing is. Having each episode length run its course and not be stuck to a set time helps with the pacing — the shortest episode is 38 minutes and the longest is 56 minutes.
There has been no announcement yet about a Season 2 for Paper Girls, but I expect it will get one. The series as it stands now wraps up some elements but leaves it very clear the writers intend for more seasons.
I give Paper Girls (Amazon Studios; 16+; 8 eps) an 8 out of 10. It has content warnings, including alcohol usesexual contentviolencefoul language. Not included in the warnings are depictions of teenage and tween smoking.
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