Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #11! So good of you to join me again after the most briefest of hiatuses. Unless, of course, you’re stumbling upon this after I burned through the series. In which case, don’t listen to me. Time is a circle! And since the Paper Girls TV series dropped on Amazon Video in late July, I figured I really need to watch that ASAP… and to me, “ASAP” means “as soon as I finish the comic series”. So I gotta get going.

In the previous storyline, three out of four girls are transported to the Year 2016. Mac died of cancer in the early ‘90s. Tiff no longer lives in Stony Stream. Erin not only still lives in Stony Stream at age 40, but she also still works at the newspaper. She is unmarried and riddled with anxiety.

However, Old Erin proves to be a useful ally, and she helps the troupe of preteen paper girls to the next point of their adventure, likely killing herself AND her helicopter pilot younger sister Missy in the process.

After jumping through a time portal hovering above downtown Cleveland, the girls land on a mysterious hill with a mysterious crop-circle type impression of a demon goat holding an apple. KJ is there, and she claims that she hasn’t bumped into any other human being since she arrived at this mysterious point in time.

Let’s crack open Issue #11, which will introduce more questions than are actually answered! Ahhh, I missed this.

Paper Girls, Issue #11 [February, 2017]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

Whoa doggies! A semi-supersized issue! You know what that means: a 5,000 word write-up! Strap in, dorks, I might be in rare form this time. (Unlikely)

Is that tattoo-faced Erin in the bushes? Badass, yo.

The very first panel shows either a clod of dirt or a large poop ball hurling through the air. The disgusting wad of whatever smacks KJ in the back of her head. She is playing field hockey. She is being picked on.

“Whoever threw that is a dead woman,” she snarls.
“I’d like to see you try, kike,” a mean girl says smugly, surround by other mean-looking mean girls. Sorry for writing “kike” on my blog. That’s not nice.

KJ is beyond shocked that she was even called this.

“You heard me, KJ. That’s what the ‘K’ stands for, right?”

Wow! Rude! Hella rude! KJ is gonna tell Coach right away and she’ll beat your ass ruddy, she will! Make no mistake, sister! It’s Chinatown, bitch!

“Coach?” this awful blonde girl sneers, “She’s the first person we heard call you that.”

Well that sucks. KJ starts running toward her enemy in a feral rage, wielding her stick like a baseball bat.

“Karina,” an old woman, KJ’s grandmother, appears out of nowhere floating five feet off of the ground, “save your hate for the real monsters.”
“Those girls are monsters, Bub!”
“They’re cowards little one.”

Listen to Bub, KJ. Bub’s been around the block a few times. And by that I mean, she’s been pushing her “Bubble’s Depo” cart around the block a few times. Google that.

“Give them nothing but your pity,” Bub tells KJ, putting her hand on her shoulder and revealing the Auschwitz tattoo on her arm. 11706.

Wait a minute. Something’s not right… and it’s the number.

“The worst is behind you, Karina. Right behind you.”

Gah! Goddamnit, Bub! You know I hate it when you do that.

Right behind KJ are the mean girls, and they turned into hella zombies speaking that hella alien language that’s popular with the teenagers these days. All four of them spit red blood-like liquid at KJ, which traps her in a wash of the stuff not seen in such an overwhelming manner since the blood elevator from The Shining! Except with, you know, maybe more blood actually?

KJ wakes up from her dream. No apples in KJ’s dream, just antisemitism and drowning in blood. Wholesome stuff, really. “Can’t sleep either,” Erin asks, sitting against a fallen tree trunk with an open Cleveland Preserver chock full of the newsiest news that money can buy. A bonfire crackles. Tiff is sound asleep. I don’t know where the fuck Mac is.

The girls are camping out in the same clearing in the forest where that time-and-space traveling capsule was located. The one where those Teenage Mutants helped Erin survive her gunshot wound.

After Erin comments that they’re still living whatever nightmare KJ may have had, KJ responds that there are scarier things than being lost in the woods in some unknown timeline.

“At least we’re stranded on dry land,” KJ says, stretching and putting on a jacket. KJ doesn’t swim, she’s afraid of the water. She watched a cousin drown in a pool when she was in first grade.

Heh. Awkward… uhm…

“Hold on,” KJ gapes at her sort-of friend, “are you seriously reading the funnies? At a time like this?”

Yes! Yes she is! That Garfield, he sure likes his lasagna! Hahahaha! Don’t get in his way! LMAO LOL! “I’m trying to figure out what the heck time this even is,” Erin says as KJ notices she’s been reading the newspaper from November 1st, 1988. That’s yesterday. So it’s the day after yesterday. Which is today. Case closed! Not the the day after tomorrow, though. That’s Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum. And it sucked.

ACK!

But yeah, Erin’s not really trying to figure out what day it is. She’s reading the funnies. And she claims that she likes Crankshaft more than Calvin & Hobbes, which is complete fucking blasphemy and I fucking hate Erin now. What a horrible little whore.

KJ just now notices that Mac is missing, but no worries! She’s just chilling alone by the nearby river catching fish and floating around and swimming upstream to mate. That’s not good, though. She shouldn’t be alone. Well, she should be alone to mate. Well, no she shouldn’t. Also, she’s 12. So stop thinking about that so much, you awful person reading this right now. I’m calling the police.

Does your prison have WiFi? Good! Let’s continue then. Tiff stirs and wakes up. She gave Mac her flashlight, so she should be A-OK. Also, Mac’s tough and she’ll punch any beaver that looks at her funny.

“So what, we promised to never split up again,” KJ shouts incredulously at the half-asleep Tiff, who is opening one eye at her. Annoyed. Mac can take care of herself. She’s punching crocodiles. Relax.

Erin pipes in to tell KJ that she offered to accompany Mac, but she wanted to be alone. Probably to think about all the cancer she’s going to have. Just riddled with so much cancer. Packed to the gills. “I think maybe she had to go number two,” she says, staring back down at her newspaper while KJ and Tiff look at her like they want to throw rocks at her head.

Mac is indeed by the river, staring down forlornly at the single cigarette left in her pack. Cancer stick or no cancer stick? Save it for later? Eat it now? What’s the point, she may as well just kill herself. Just attach a rock to her legs and jump in that river. I told you she was hardcore.

Gesundheit! Want a cigarette?

Well, getting surprised from behind by a bow-and-arrow wielding… Erin-looking girl wasn’t expected to be in the cards today, that’s for damn sure. But here she is with a necklace made out of computer chips and some tribal tattoos on her face. “H’achti roo!” she hollers. Mac stays frozen in her spot.

“Look, I have no clue what you’re saying, but I just found out my expiration date, and it’s already way sooner than I’d…”

Mac is distracted by a red shooting star. Or, at least it looks like a red shooting star. Wild Erin calls it a “Pentago”. I think I had that for dinner last night.

While Wild Erin is distracted, Mac knocks her bow away and the arrow flies into the trunk of a tree with a big, loud THWOK! I think I had that as a side dish.

Ok, fuck it, we don’t need weapons. Wild Erin lunges at Mac and wraps her hands around her throat. “RRAIIIIE!” Wild Erin screams while Mac is all “blub blub blub hrrrk blub”.

Good timing! The other three girls emerge from the woods to watch Mac getting choked out! “Stop staring… and coldcock this bitch!” Mac yells while KJ stands petrified, unable to perform the requested coldcocking.

It’s because… wait for the reveal… wait for it…

Wait for it…

I’ll go grab a snack. I’m feeling leftover pentago with a side of thwok.

OK, I’m ready now. Whew, I feel better! It’s because Wild Erin has a baby strapped to her back.

“Jahpo! Nee… nee mahdi Jahpo!” she yells, possibly angry because she thinks someone’s gonna steal her baby? Not today! This ain’t Raising Arizona with Nicolas Cage! Well… wait… maybe it is?… no, no it’s not.

The three girls tell Wild Erin to cool her jets. Mac, now relieved of her choking out situation, starts getting back up. I’m starting to realize that this woman may not be a Wild version of Erin after all. BUT, I’m going to continue calling her as such until I’m proven otherwise! It’s only fair.

Whoa whoa, hey, whoa. Not in front of the children, now.

The four of them stupidly assumed that this baby was Wild Erin’s brother, but they were boobily mistaken. Probably ‘cause she’s, like, twelve years old. Just like them. And, as far as they all know, they’re not mothers themselves. It seems strange! Odd, you might say. “We don’t even know when this is,” Tiff says, “Maybe children had children a million years ago.”

“Or, maybe this is what happens in a million years,” Erin argues, always the buzzkill. Mac wants to talk about the red shooting star, but the sudden KRAKs in the woods are a matter to attend to immediately.

“Muire!” Wild Erin exclaims. “Muire feeh!”

A massive yeti-type thing emerges going “GAHHRRE!” and it’s very scary looking. These girls should probably run away. They should run away from the muire feeh right now.

It knocks Mac in the river. While the three girls scramble to find something to save her, Wild Erin tugs at her arrow in the tree. KJ sadly hands Tiff her field hockey stick, but it’s not for what you think it is. KJ jumps in the river! How’s that for a good friend? I wouldn’t jump in the river for nobody, that’s for sure. Damn skippy.

Somewhere else in the woods, a large capsule descends from the sky and scopes out the environment. Radiation is minimal. Atmosphere is breathable. Climate is comfortable. Time to get out!

The door of the capsule cracks open with a big hissing sound. A lady who looks like P!nk emerges from within. Or maybe La Roux. She’s cyberpunky, darn tootin’.

Stay tuned for Art Bell at 11:30, with special guest Alf!

She hops out with hover boots and scopes the land out. She records her notes for posterity, perhaps to become famous someday to be the “woman who invented time travel”. Dr. Qanta Braunstein. She arrived safely and successfully at her target date…

11,706 BCE

Exciting!

Final Thoughts

11,706 BCE, huh? Let’s look that up…

Domestication of the goat! Domestication of the sheep! Oh man, this is going to be epic!