Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #5! In the previous installment, the two teenage mutant ninja alien types direct the girls to help find a healing device to save Erin’s life. En route through the sewers, a mysterious orb entity with robot eyeball extensions, called an Editrix, ambushed the group. The Editrix was sent into pursuit by the weird adult rangers with the robot suits and the Halo swords. Tiff’s life flashed before her eyes (months upon months of playing Arkanoid on the NES) before the Editrix was destroyed.

Eventually, the group encounters a large capsule similar to the one the girls found in a basement of new construction. The mutant teenagers take Erin into the capsule and disappear, leaving the three conscious girls completely rattled.

What’s going on! I don’t know! And this is the last issue of the first collection. Let’s see if we even get ONE answer!

Paper Girls, Issue #5 [February, 2016]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

The doors of the Healing/Abduction Pod are open. We see Erin’s point of view: a large warehouse with tall shelves. A black obelisk with an Apple logo stands right in the middle. Understandably, she’s in a confused daze. Maybe because her family is a staunch Windows 2.1 household! I dunno.

“She’s coming to. Better grab a SquawkBox for yourself, pal,” Heck calls over to Naldo, who grumbles in Alienese and looks for a translator. Heck introduces themselves to Erin; they both brought her to their “Whenhouse”. As in, it doesn’t matter ware, but when! Ha! Jokes!

“We had to find some junk in here to patch you up,” he says while Naldo (the more grotesque-looking of the two by far) grabs his own SquawkBox, as it were, and joins in on the conversation. Erin can’t feel her legs, but Naldo tells her not to worry. That feeling will pass. “Just let the bugs do their work.”

Erin looks down vaguely at her stomach, where there are literal bugs crawling around her gunshot wound. Just rootin’ around in there.

It’s pretty gross, actually.

Oh yeah, no problem. This is totally normal and fine.

“…I think I’m gonna throw up,” Erin grimaces. These bugs are called iNsecs, and they might be little robots? Anyway, don’t throw up on those, they were hard to steal!

Right, just like they stole Tiffany’s walkie-talkie! It’s all coming back again! Erin puts on her angry face, but these two are proud of their pillaging. “Yeah, can you believe we found this badass spaceship in some dump?” Heck grins, referring to the fake Healing/Abduction Pod. These kids aren’t time-travelers after all. Time travel isn’t even feasible! Earth keeps revolving around the sun; if you travel back in time one hour, you’re gonna be gasping for air as the cold vacuum of space outgasses every atom in your body, ya ninny.

ANYHOO, they’re, like, time and space travelers! Don’t worry about it. Sit tight, they’re going to launch this pod back to the mesosphere of ‘88, or whatever. Again, don’t worry about it. It’ll take too long to explain! Just sit tight, kid, you’re going back home. Bugs and all.

Yeah, well, sometimes it’s extremely hard to tell the difference between the two.

As they’re whizzing past time and space, Naldo observes some “old-timers” trying to “ground them”. Heck panics and entertains the idea of “breaking curfew”. Naldo angrily tells his comrade that fucking with the “tributary” in such a manner is “suicide”. Heck tells him to “suck Superman’s dick”. I made that last one up! Hard to tell, right? Ha ha! Looks like my commentary is pretty worthless, huh? Gotta buy your own copy of the issue then, huh? *winks at the camera*

Guess what, friends? Here’s the part where I totally hyperventilate nerdily over the time-travel plot device, because the fun begins. After a few modulations and activations by Heck, the space pod lurches, fizzles, bumps, and jumps.

And the space pod ends up in the basement of the new construction home! THAT’S RIGHT, BITCHES. We have entered the paradox. Start sucking it.

Conveniently, it’s about this time that KJ decides that the basement is not something to be overlooked. For whatever reason, she has a feeling that the three of them MUST go back there. They NEEDS MUST, you might say. “Why? You think we can use that other capsule-thing to chase after the one they used to kidnap Erin?” Mac asks, but no. Clearly, she hasn’t caught on yet. This is Back to the Future II, kids. “I’m thinking there never was an other,” KJ postulates openly, because they’ve all seen enough crazy shit in the last six hours already. Let’s just pile more on. Bring it.

Nah, no time for that at the moment. The Pterodactyl Lady showed up. “Come ashore peacenik now, aye?”

“JESUS CHRIST!” yells a bug-eyed Mac.
“Please don’t kill us! We…we totally give up!” yells a desperate KJ.
“Actually. We don’t,” states a gun-totin’ NRA member Tiff.

Listen, we ALL get a turn to hold the gun.

Now it’s KJ’s turn to be appalled that Tiff has the gun. My, how the tables have turned right round, baby, right round.

“I’m not gonna stand here and be eaten by some bitch’s dinosaur,” Tiff takes a bold stance here. No more Arkanoid. Time to be a woman. Kickin’ ass and chewin’ bubblegum and all that Rowdy Roddy Piper nonsense. Oh snap! They Live didn’t get released until November 4, 1988! That’s still, like, three days away. “Stay back!” she yells. Excitement.

“Common, grrl, clear yain’t de kind what can end and human’s being,” says Cardinal, sounding thickly Scottish in my head. And yeah, maybe she’s right, maybe Tiff doesn’t have the GUTS to kill this lady. “But I’ve got no problem killing it,” she says, referring to the Pterodactyl thing. She points her gun at the it in question.

Woof, sir. It’s enough for even Cardinal to get worried. Tiff cocks the hammer (yeah baby). Cardinal stands down. Tiff wins. Don’t harm the pet.

Mac clandestinely steals Cardinal’s Halo sword right from her grasp while KJ runs her mouth off about the gun not even being loaded. This causes Mac to turn quickly to yell at her for being stupid. She accidentally presses a button on the Halo sword in the process. The Halo sword blasts the ground in front of Cardinal. Cardinal flies back. There’s a lot going on here, pay attention. Cardinal bumps her head on a tree. You paying attention? The dinosaur flies away. OK, that’s all.

While Mac hopes she didn’t just kill this lady, the other two want to book it before any more of her kind show up. Eventually, with the girls long gone, Cardinal comes to and dizzily radioes the beard guy with the music shirts. He’s wearing an Apple Records shirt now, pouring himself some coffee. “De yung locals b harmed & dangereux,” Cardinal tells him, “Nochoiced but to try as adults.”

What say you, Old Bearded One? It’s a hard no. “I’ll punish them myself,” he tells her as he walks through his giant hallway full of kidnapped people floating in stasis within pink tubes.

You know, some people collect stamps.

Erin has another nightmare. It’s 1980, she’s about four, and her dad is watching the news. John Lennon was just shot with a gun (by Paul McCartney, just sayin’). Her dad is crying on the couch. “Why are you sad?” Erin asks, and her father tells her that he’s more afraid than sad. Well, little 4-year-old Erin didn’t know that grown-ups could get scared too. “Oh honey…we’re terrified,” he says, pulling his face out of his hands, revealing a scary, melting abomination! Just a big, gross, Hell Face! Boo!

Then Erin wakes up. The bugs have finished stitching her up; she’s surprised to even be alive. In fact, there’s not a scratch on her!

Heck and Naldo, though, they’re both phased into each other: Heck’s right hand through Naldo’s skull. Naldo’s left arm through Heck’s right leg. Big-time like an Ezra Orion / Hell Demon hybrid situation from East of West! Naldo’s probably dead. Ahhh, Naldo. We hardly knew ye.

“…ship kept us…all in stasis…as long as it could…but…I’m worried…our storage cells…coulda cracked…so you need to…vamoose…” pants Heck in a veritable party of ellipses and near-death exposition dialogue. Erin starts blubbering a little bit, asking why these complete strangers would do so much to help? Because, dingus, y’all girls reminded them of themselves! Just some good guys lookin’ to be good guys in the world. Ok, dead now.

Click your heels together three times, sister.

Warning alarms start going off within the pod, complete with jarring gobbledygook screeching over the speakers. I still can’t read any of that language. It probably says something like “Alert! Pizza Rolls are done!”

Erin slams her fists against the window in panic. Through no efforts of her own, the pod hatch opens up to the scenic basement. Her friends are already there waiting. “Holy crap, I was right!” KJ shrieks with joy as Erin stumbles out all woozy and…well, no longer crawling with bugs, at least.

Tiff wonders aloud if this means that Erin was passed out in that pod the entire time that they were all there earlier checking out the pod? Personally, I think that’s fascinating! But Mac doesn’t care one iota about this time-travel nerd shit. Erin’s here, she’s alive, that’s all that matters right now god fucking damnit and such.

Erin sings the praises of the two weirdo mutant teenagers. They didn’t rape her in the mouth, no sir, not at all, not one bit. They saved her life! And now they’re dead! lmao. It’s better than what you guys did. You guys fucking shot her in the stomach, you maniacs.

Oh sure, NOW the other three girls are suddenly sad that these walkie-talkie stealing assholes bit the big one. Well, so be it. There’s bigger fish to fry right now! For starters, this space pod gizmo is leaking fuel or something, so they can’t stay down there too long lest they suffocate in these oh-so-sweet fumes! “I don’t know how much you remember,” KJ calmly informs the time-traveling girl, “but things aren’t exactly much safer out there.”

And these kids can’t catch a break for five minutes. Apple Records Flip-Flip-Wearin’ Beard-Havin’ Pink Tube Collector is right outside the house, yelling for their attention. “Listen to your elders and come outside this instant!” he says patronizingly, flanked by Cardinal the Steel Soldier and her Pet Pterodactyl.

“I’m sure you’re confused, but whatever those juvenile delinquents in there told you is completely untrue. You have waded deep into a very old…generational conflict.”

Weird Beard calls these now-dead kids “a murderous gang of thugs”. They steal from the past to fund the future.

“The Tree of Knowledge,” Erin says vaguely, staring at the dude’s Apple Records shirt, remembering the recurring visions of apples in her dreams. That strange, all-encompassing humming begins again. VMMMMMMM. Pink light grows brighter and brighter, emanating from the basement, as if the pod is going to explode at any moment. What to do? Can’t stay in the house. Can’t leave the house. A real pickle!

Someone get the gun out again. It’s got to work out for us one of these times.

The humming gets even louder. The pink light gets even brighter. The whole house is aglow. Even the old man is getting scared, pooping his pants, but he was probably doing that anyway. He’s probably wearing a diaper.

The entire house warps away, leaving a smoking crater in the ground. A montage of the four girls floating through time and space is shown, signifying the important event of LEAVING 1988. They all land on a deserted street. Well, three of them do. KJ is missing.

A car approaches. Tiff lost the gun. What to do now? Why, the Paper Girl gambit sounds reasonable. Erin stands up and starts waving her arms frantically: “Excuse me! My name is Erin Tieng, I deliver newspapers, and…and my friends and I need help, please.”

The car stops. A woman gets out. “Is this a joke?” she asks. The three girls stand there SHOCKED and SPEECHLESS and A LITTLE BIT HUNGRY?

The woman has chin-length hair, an iPod in her front pocket, an earbud in one ear, one earbud dangling down.

Yeah yeah yeah, who the fuck isn’t Erin Tieng these days?

Final Thoughts

WHAT! Who didn’t see this one coming?! HABLABAHANAHABAHAHB!

This is the end of the first “storyline”, so to speak, but I’m going to keep going. Too intriguing. Fuck East of West! At least for now. Paper Girls is where it’s at.