Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #16! Yes, I’m back rather quickly on Paper Girls! I can’t get enough of this shit and I still need to watch the TV series! Perhaps I’ll run through it all at this point? Or perhaps I’ll put my thumb up my butthole.

In the previous storyline, the three girls catch up with KJ in the year 11,706 BCE! They meet a young cavegirl named Wari, who is about their age, with a baby, Jahpo, in tow. Three rapey cavemen want to steal the baby for themselves because they think they each stake equal claim in the child, and the four 1988 children aim to help out. Help Wari, not the rapey cavemen. Sorry, that sounded way more like they wanted to help out the rapey cavemen.

A woman named Dr. Qanta from 2055 arrives in the same prehistoric jungle, but is despondent after learning that the other girls made it there first. She also helps out, but then ends up getting sort of killed while saving Wari and Jahpo. While dying, she tells the girls to go back to 2055 and tell her colleagues to send the “Beta Model” to repair the damage!

Well, one of them certainly doesn’t go to 2055. Tiff ends up in the year 2000, where Y2K has actually fucked the world up and now there are giant Transformers roaming around.

All this make sense? No? Then read the series yourselves, you whiny little dorks.

Paper Girls, Issue #16 [October, 2017]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

Look at that cover! Tiff is going tp tear up the year 2000! Ahh. just like I did at age 12.

Seriously. I was 12 for most of 2000.

Another day, another apple. Lots of apples are popping up in Paper Girls. This one is from an Applebee’s sign. “Praise be, we have a lock,” says someone off-panel. “Stealth drone confirms enemy forces are once again exploiting the four-dimensional crease over Stony Stream, Ohio, in the former United States of–”

Yap yap yap. One of those nice violet Foldings hovers over the Applebee’s sign, which advertises that they’re gonna party like it’s the end of 1999. How quaint.

These people talking are in a church of some sort. “Why the hell would they invade the 21st century?” a leader of Future Christ or Some Such asks a woman who clearly looks like a high-level Christ Lady. She corrects him. 2000 is still the 20th century. He stares daggers at her.

This guy looks like Desmond from Lost, and he is known as the Grand Father. Of what, I don’t know. This creepy cult? This guy doesn’t like the appellation of “Grand Father”, but this woman tells him to get used to it. It sucks being new at the Grand Father thing, I guess. “In time,” she says, “you’ll appreciate having a title to hide behind.”

Oh, ok! Hunky dory!

A lot more talking later, they prepare for… uh… something.

“They’ve declared war on the entire timeline.” The Grand Father looks grim. Perhaps even motivated to declare war on the timeline ruiners. Time will tell. Or it won’t, since war was declared on it.

The Moon Units have really Dweezilled big time here! And who’s gonna clean up this mess??

They speak of the children. These 1988 little pains in the ass have really fucked everything up. The big reveal here is that these church people are from the past. They walk by transparent glass cages with mammoths and various other prehistoric mammalian creatures (other than mammoths? Your guess is as good as mine. Mastodons?). “You expect us to go into combat against them?” asks the Prioress incredulously. “They’re just kids.”

Yeah, well, kids or no kids, they’re going to get a taste of CHURCH JUSTICE. Whatever that means! I dunno. I’m pretty sleepy right now.

It’s baffling. These kids have centuries of wisdom behind them! How are they being so reckless and stupid?

Are these prehistoric creatures ready for battle? “‘No-know howlong til dey @ maxima’ as my altar girls say,” the Prioress reports. Well then, drastic times call for drastic measures, eh? Let’s check out that Applebee’s!

How very intriguing. Let’s get back to something interesting! Tiff is trying to convince the police officer that she’s a resident of Stony Stream, that she lives down the street, and she’s not dangerous so please don’t take her to Hella Jail! She just “got warped here from ancient times”!

“You can look it up! I’m a deliverer for The Cleveland Preserver! My name is Tiffany Quilkin and I’m from the year 1988!”

A likely story! Who was president in the year 1988? Ronald Reagan?! THE ACTOR?!?! Man, I’m pretty sure I made that joke already somewhere down the line. Sorry about that, I shall pray for death now.

Tiff sees those giant Transformers robots fighting in the distance, but the police officer can’t see them at all. She thinks he’s out of his mind, they’re right… there?…

Blockbuster? The year 2000 really IS the future!

Police Officer Mustache-Face is taking Tiff downtown. Her parents can come pick her up. She, obviously, panics at this sudden path of fate her life has traveled down.

Meanwhile, Mac, KJ, and Erin are at the Stony Gate Mall again. Mac wakes up on a bench thinking they’re all dead. Mac is confused! See, look at her confused face! “The science lady whose time machine blew up on us said she was from 2055. And this place looks even less futuristic than the last time we–”

Hold that thought. Two kids are trying to loot a $10,000 plasma TV. “Only five inches thick!” the box advertises. One kid is wearing one of those New Year’s glasses that have the new year on it. The new year is 2000. So all four kids are in the same timeline right now, which is reassuring. Reassuring for whom, I haven’t figured out yet.

“You ladies getting in on the end-of-the-world discount, too?”

“End of the world?” Mac asks, confused. See, look at her confused face!

“‘Cause of the millennium bug. I heard it already made a bunch of planes fall out of the sky,” says Dumbass #1.

…

“How big is this bug?” Erin asks. The kids start running away. Mac demands that they tell them what year this is.

Some horse tranquilizers sound pretty dandy right about now.

Now what? At least it’s reassuring that the year 2000 actually isn’t the end of the world since they’ve already been in the year 2016. KJ suggests looking for Tiff. Mac reassures her that Tiff is fine. Erin knows someone who can help. I’m gonna just hang back here and read comic books.

Erin’s got a plan? She knows someone who can help? It’s not gonna be Future Erin again, is it? She has anxiety. Plus, in 2000 she’s 26, living it up and fucking everything that moves before she becomes a big, depressed mess. Yeah, right, sure. Good one.

Flashback time. A younger Tiff plays some Atari. “We get to keep this?” she asks her foster parents. “We wanted to get you something fun… to thank you for handling our meeting like a big girl.”

She asks if her real parents are getting her a present too. These people remind her that they are her real parents. Her birth mother is not a real parent, and no, she’s not getting her anything.

Yeah, girl games like hot oil wrestling, foxy boxing, and such and such.

Her birth dad is some deadbeat. Whatever, doesn’t matter, shoot down those asteroids! Hoo-weee!

OK, she wakes up from her dream now. She’s in the back of a cop car, which is racist. The officer is struggling to get a good connection with dispatch. Something about a truck falling out of the sky. It doesn’t matter. The officer doesn’t see the giant Transformer foot in front of him. Tiff tries to tell him to look out, but it’s too late. CRUNCH. With little fanfare, the car settles on its side; a nice fire begins in the engine.

So now that Tiff’s dead, we can move onto other things! The other three girls have newspapers from November 1, 1988 turned to the comics section. Little oddball nuances seem off to them, such as the title of a comic named “Frankie Tomatah”. Erin supposes that the future teens may have checked the paper while they were running around, before they activated their time machine. Maybe there are clues in the comics page! Clues like “Garfield hates Mondays” and “Ziggy hates pants”. Or clues such as the cartoonist of this mystery “Frank Tomatah” comic strip, Chuck Spachefski, lives right here in Stony Stream, per Erin’s oversized copy of the White Pages.

They make their way to the Stony Chateaux condominium complex, which KJ rightfully senses that the place reeks of divorced dads.

“You didn’t have to bring the entire White Pages, you know?” Mac sneers. “Just rip out the dude’s number.”

“And damage a book?” Erin responds with wide dinner-plate eyeballs.

Nothing stops a bad guy with a gun quite like another bad guy with a gun who thinks he’s a good guy with a gun!

Mac knocks on the door and a lovely middle-aged woman with a bob and glasses answers. “Oh. Thank goodness you found me,” she smiles with creepy intensity. “Um,” Erin nervously responds, “actually, we’re looking for a Chuck Spa–”

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, YOUNG LADY! SHE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO SAY! ALWAYS ONE STEP AHEAD, DEAR. It’s Charlotte Spachefski, but her dad has always said no paper would buy a strip from a lady cartoonist! We’ve been burned too many times by Cathy. Come inside!

“Ma’am, were you expecting us?” KJ asks the woman as the other two look around the cluttered living room of paper, pencils, cartoon easels, jars filled with feces, and other such similar cartoonist paraphernalia. She says that she has been expecting them, although they “haven’t made an entrance like that since ‘92.” She then tells them that their disguises are getting better! “But that hairstyle was out 20 years ago”.

Mac is getting irate now. All these weirdos they keep bumping into who know more than them. No one should no more than Mac! And Mac doesn’t even know how a sex works. “Lady, what the fuck is going on here? You know who we are?”

“Of course, silly. You’re time travelers.”

She reveals an entire wall full of newspaper clippings, charts, photos, diagrams, sticky notes, and maps. It looks like Fox Mulder’s office.

Charlotte smiles sweetly. “I’m only your biggest fan.”

Final Thoughts

All right, I like where this is going already! Except the Tiff part, that seems dire. But the other three are going to get wrapped up in some loony’s time traveling conspiracy steez and it’s all going to be 100% correct.