Paper Girls, Issue #17

* Part 2 of 5 of the Paper Girls Volume 4 storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #17! In the previous installment, it’s the year 2000. I assume it’s the year 2000 for everyone, but Tiff is separated from the rest and there are large Transformer-type robots milling around that only she can see. The cop crashes into one of them with his car, and last we see of them is a crunched car with an engine fire. So, they’re probably dead!

Erin, Mac, and KJ stumble upon a cartoonist in the Stony Chateaux complex named Charlotte Spachefski, who has been expecting them. She’s a slightly creepy middle-aged woman with a wall full of Fox Mulder-style newspaper clippings, sticky notes, maps, charts, and photos. “I’m only your biggest fan,” she tells them, referring to them being time travelers and everything.

I’m looking forward to finding out more about this cuckoo lady and what the year 2000 will bring these girls besides “Who Let the Dogs Out?”. Yeesh.

Paper Girls, Issue #17 [November, 2017]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

WHAT’S AN INTERNET? Apple has done it again! I love everyone’s expression on the front cover. If Tiff were here she’d be pushing Spachefski aside to do some serious Arkanoid cheat code research.

“THE END OF THE WORLD?!? Y2K Insanity! Will computers melt down? Will society?” – Time Magazine cover, January 18, 1999.

Tiff is bleeding, but alive, in the ruined car. A giant Transformer-type robot is hovering right above; controlled by a small team of teenagers not unlike Heck and Naldo like it’s the Starship Enterprise. They speak their crazy alien-like gibberish to one another. The one in the command chair looks mean. One of the others looks sad. That’s the extent of my characterization for these kids so far.

The Transformers are at war with one another. Teenagers in a blue Transformer shoot a flying fist at a red Transformer. They’re more than meets the eye!

Red Transformer contains the Prioress and the Grand Father, who we learned about (barely) in the previous issue. Grand Father uses time manipulation to avoid the fist and they launch a fist of their own with great smugness.

The Prioress reports that a “local SunCar” has been totaled, then Grand Father reminds her that it was probably actually run on gas and not the sun. The Prioress tells him to shut the fuck up and maybe freak out a little bit more instead of being infuriatingly calm.

Grand Father calmly tells the Prioress why he’s calm: the Restorers will clean up whatever mess the children make! Easy as that. Piece of cake. “Those machines just repair infrastructure, Grand Father! They can’t resurrect people!” the Prioress shouts in a panic.

OK, yeah! Yeah!! Now you’re speaking my language!

“So tell me,” Charlotte Spachefski says with that kind of overly-intense cat lady energy, “how far in the future are you visiting from?”

Mac looks at her like she’s going to hit her. KJ is a little more kind. “Mac and I were born in 1976,” she says. Mac tells her that her uncle calls them “Bicentennial Babes”. “He’s kind of a dick,” she adds.

Oh, ok, that’s not expected. “You girls are just… just displaced civilians,” Charlotte holds her hand to her mouth. “You aren’t part of the war effort at all, are you?”

Look, lady. These girls woke up on a normal 11/1/88 morning and now everything is fucking stupid and chaotic. What war could you possibly be talking about? And don’t say something crazy like “The Battle of the Ages”.

“The Battle of the Ages, of course. It’s been raging for most of my life, though the first shots are only now being…” she catches herself for a moment. “Forgive me, you must be terribly confused.”

Let’s start over! Erin, Mac, KJ, the other one, they’ve all been time-hopping enough that they’ve surely encountered the Old-Timers. Charlotte points to a picture of the first guy they ever encountered back in Issue #3. “He’s an enemy fighter, part of the first generations born after the invention of time travel,” Charlotte explains. These enemy fighters are on a mission to stop anyone from time traveling to the past, stating that interfering with the past in any way is immoral… even though they themselves time travel to stop it. That’s my little addition there.

I speak to the manager one word at a time just like everyone else.

Charlotte was lucky enough to meet one of the good guys when she was about 12 years old! His name was Steve Urkel and he had a lot of family-related matters to speak of! Nope, just kidding, that’s one of the other good guys! This guy was named Jude *points to a picture of an ugly kid* and he was from 70,000 A.D. Jude looks like the sad teenager in the blue Transformer.

Mac chimes in that this guy looks like Heck and Naldo. They were friends of Jude; they threw bugs on Erin and made her all better. These guys are national treasures, the lot of them! Traveling through time to set right what once went wrong. Nice fellas. Too bad they died horribly!

KJ interrupts and asks for help to find Tiff. She may still be stuck in prehistoric times, but hopefully she’s very much in the year 2000 and not suffering from car crash-related injuries as they speak. Then KJ herself is interrupted by a loud KRABOOM and the shattering of window glass. Charlotte remains calm. “The fighting draws nearer,” she says like a robot. The Old-Timers are gonna hit every single person with their amnesia rays soon enough. But that’s ok! Come down to Charlotte’s cellar, children. She has candy! And also safety from the amnesia rays! In the form of candy!

“Oh, screw that! Going into creepy basements is what got us into this mess!” Mac snaps. Even Erin looks pissed off at the prospect of being led down some rando’s basement. Do you know what Charlotte says to this, besides the candy? She also has a device that will locate their missing friend. It’s in her pants, but also in the basement. Also, please come downstairs.

Tiff finally fully wakes up from her crash-induced nap and discovers the body of the cop still strapped in his seat. Oh hell no! In a move of badassery, she kicks the rear window to pieces and drags him out of the burning car and to a safe distance. That’s about 200 pounds of dead weight, sister! Well done!

Then the car explodes and these drones start flooding into the scene and swarming the car. In about ten seconds flat, the car is completely repaired like new. One drone notices Tiff and starts coming toward her.

“Uhnn…. Uhnnnn…” The cop is still alive. She apologizes and runs off, leaving the cop there for the drone to take care of. And by that I mean the drone violates him. And by that I mean, to death.

I.. don’t… think he did… Oh wait, you said “bone”? Oh, absolutely!

Charlotte takes the girls downstairs where she has her fancy iMac G3 with the gaudy orange plastic. She calls it her “Folding Finder”, which, naturally, folds the findings! Or something to that effect. She learned of these foldings from Jude in 1958. Good ol’ Jude. Very respectful, didn’t try to bone Charlotte or nuthin’. The foldings are the by-products of the first attempts at time travel; they created these creases… much like when you fold Paper, Girls.

Erin correctly guesses that when Charlotte finds these foldings for allies like Jude, she hides the information in her comic strips. Like when Jon Arbuckle is like “Did you eat my lasagna, Garfield?” and Garfield says “THE FOLDING IS ON THE CORNER OF 1ST STREET AND NORTHFIELD AVE.”

Charlotte is chuffed that Erin figured it out! A sharp girl. She’d make a great ally for the Battle of the Ages and whatnot.

“I don’t like this, Kaje,” Mac whispers. “You see the way this crazy old lesbo is looking at Erin?”

“Mac,” KJ responds, half listening, “when I grow up I think I’m going to be a lesbian. I think maybe I’m a lesbian already.”

Mac’s eyes get huge. “The fuck did you just say?”

No time for more sexuality-related self discoveries! Charlotte found Tiff, and it’s not good. It’s not good at all. She’s… y’all ready for this? She’s a few minutes away, cool huh? Hardly! She’s out in the open where the old-timers can getcha.

They torture their prisoners until they tell them everything they know.

And unfortunately for you three, I’ve got the biggest gun in the dang ol’ west.

Great, again with the guns. These girls know too much and again with the guns. Aren’t we all a little tired of the guns? Guns for breakfast, guns for lunch, guns for dinner, guns guns guns.

What’s Tiff up to? She found her house and it looks like someone had a New Year’s party. Streamers and banners that say “Happy Fucking 2000” and bottles of booze on the floor.

It doesn’t really look like her parents live here anymore, except for the picture on the wall with the two of them and a dog. Tiff gets slightly miffed by this whiff, a sniff, of information…iff. Her parents would never let her get a dog!

“Yo. Can I help you?” says a voice in a room with a roaring fire in the fireplace.

“GAH!” Tiff screams, beholding the person before her. Some gothed out chick in a gothed out chair, lookin’ like Marilyn Manson at his most Marilyn Manson-y. When asked who she is, Tiff tells the mysterious woman that she’s a friend of the family who lives here… and if she knows Tiffany Quilkin.

The woman says, yeah, she knows Tiffany Quilkin.