Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #20! Hello, end of the storyline! We’ve had fun along the way, haven’t we, friends? In the previous installment, the girls catch up with Older Tiff and then Charlotte Spachefski shows up with a gun.

That’s it.

Paper Girls, Issue #20 [February, 2018]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

“ARMAGEDDON

Year 2000 Computer Bug

Will Turn Machine Against Man!

-Weekly World New Headline, 1999”

I’m beginning to think the girls won’t really end up far in the future. It’s way more fun to lampoon current eras. I hope they hit the early ‘60s and collectively be the second gunman that blew Kennedy’s head off.

Or, show up during the World War II-era nuclear fission experiments and accidentally subject Mac to cancer-causing radiation!

Grand Father with the Wu-Tang clan shirt! We saw him in Volume 1 and it completely flew over my head that this guy was the same guy as the other guy, just older. Jahpo, man. He gets around.

He’s looking sadly at a picture of him with the Prioress. Fitting to the running Apple theme, there’s a photo on his desk with what may be his family, framed by an apple. Write that down, it’s barely important. Maybe.

One of his mercenary men comes in with information. A Folding has appeared as predicted. Almost to the minute! Somewhere over the “Eerie Reservoir”, which may either a mispelling of “Erie” or it’s just a very unsettling reservoir. “Finally,” says Grand Father. “If these are the bastards I’ve been waiting for, they’ve just fled 2000. And who can blame them?…”

“…It was a shit year,” he continues, looking at a projection of the Saint Peter’s Catholic Church. This is where the previous issue’s story left off! Let’s go there now!

“Are you girls all right? These brutes didn’t hurt you, did they?”

That’s Charlotte Spachefski with the loaded gun talking. They are not all right! Everyone’s favorite Paper Girls goth character, Chris, has been vaporized into nothing!

It’s like a jenzeeor only older.

Erin introduces Charlotte to the two Tiffanies, even though neither of them knows what’s going on for different reasons. “Don’t worry, dear,” Spachefski smiles. “If the young man they zapped is also from the present, odds are he wasn’t killed. He’s merely been time-shifted nearby for processing.”

Oh. OK! Thank you for clarifying, I– buh-what? “Processing”? Like mechanically-separated chicken? What does that mean, exactly? It means, for the old-timers to preserve status quo in certain eras, some folks need to get a little ice pick to the forehead in order to forget what they saw! That’s all!

Chris is a lost cause. They likely already did what they needed to do to him and placed him back into his bed. “But those of you who don’t want the truth ripped out of your gray matter need to follow me back to my cellar,” says the gun-toting old woman. KJ informs her that they’re not going to stick around. They’re going to use one of those Transformer robots to zap their way back to 1988. Dig?

“What robots?” Spachefski asks.

“Somehow, the Tiffanies can both see whatever’s making all those terrible noises out there, ma’am,” Erin answers respectfully.

“Or they’re bullshitting us,” Mac adds disrespectfully.

Spachefski thinks this makes sense since Tiffany arrived in 2000 from a different angle, but she doesn’t have much time to expound upon that thought. One of the formerly unconscious old-timers gets up and zaps her for processing reasons. Erin then kicks him in the face! You go, gurl.

Erin’s just about had enough of all this shit.

The church starts burning. Charlotte Spachefski actually looks like a smoldering cinder right now, so I doubt anyone’s processing anything about her. These girls need to think fast before they experience the same fate.

Younger Tiff grabs one of those Fire Staffs and stands among the flames like a total badass. “Follow me.”

Meanwhile, outside the church, the three bumpy teenagers that Grand Father and the Prioress were fighting are now entering a sewer to head toward a time travel pod…

If Issue #20 is anything like the other final storyline issues, someone very important is gonna die. And it’s gonna be hella Older Tiff since she doesn’t seem to exist in 2016. The group walks down the street lookin’ for robots. Older Tiff has been thinking, and if these girls really think they can go back to the past then she wants to go with them. Unlikely because she’s totally gonna die. However, she thinks maybe she can stop some of these disasters that happened in the ‘90s. Oklahoma City. The Unabomber. The Seinfeld finale. “…my life,” she adds. Somewhere along the line, everything turned to shit. “I mean, how the eff did I end up taking classes about supply-side economics?”

Good question! Tiff wanted to be some sort of scientist or engineer! Hell, that’s what Dr. Qanta, the time travel-inventing scientist, told her she should be! Seems weird that she didn’t even bother pursuing such a path. As someone who did pursue such a path, let me tell you from personal experience: meh.

“Time travel gets invented by a woman?” Older Tiff smiles. “Hell, yeah.”

The other three girls have been trailing behind. After KJ asks the other two if they trust the older Tiffany, Erin finds this a grand old time to bring up Mac’s inkling that KJ has been replaced by an imposter! Heh heh. But then Mac looks like she’s going to beat the shit out of her! “Sorry,” Erin apologizes hazily, “but if we’re going to bring KJ home with us, we need to make sure it’s really her.”

So KJ tells them some info only they would know. Or at least only Mac would know. Something about when they met and how very specific Mac’s shoes were. “Beat-up, off-white Chuck Taylors, with the Beastie Boys logo from Licensed to Ill written in blue Bic pen on the side.”

Mac starts to look a little melancholy. KJ goes on to describe how her first day on the job was, and how Mac had already taken over her brother’s route, and how KJ should start leaving out the sports section of the paper for any of the dads who tried to stiff her on payment.

You were also drawing hundreds of swastikas in your college-ruled Algebra notebook, along with stick figures of Mr. Rosenbaum burning at a stake.

Sounds like KJ really cared about Mac enough to remember very specific details on the first day they met! How about that, huh? It’s almost like she–

“Whew! Mac was seriously convinced you were some sort of gay pod person,” Erin laughs, relieved. “One out of two, anyway?” KJ responds, which makes Erin panic. “Cool,” Erin says in what I imagine is a very high-pitched voice.

Younger Tiff has found what they’ve been looking for: a giant, beat-up robot. THIS one they all can see. “Looks deader than my old man’s Pontiac Fiero,” Mac says. Laugh track.

Time to jumpstart the thing! You just jiggle the joystick, just like in Arkanoid! All those hours of boob-tubin’ are going to pay off in spades! She points the fire staff up and sends a blast to the giant robot’s eyeballs, which revives him quite spectacularly. He stands tall and proud! Like a 50ft tall peacock.

They all climb into its giant hand, ready to be lifted. The other girls are surprised that Older Tiff is joining them. Don’t worry about it, she’s going to help get Bill Clinton elected.

You just jump on Dr. Robotnik until his ship blows up! We can finally apply this to real life!

It doesn’t matter what Older Tiff is going to do in the past, because they’re all going to be stopped by a Transformer bot that’s about 30 times larger than theirs. “Grand Father, it’s back online!” a voice emanates from the large, hovering behemoth. The one that killed Prioress! “The boys who abandoned it must have come back with repairs,” Grand Father Jahpo Jones says all serious-faced. “Kill everyone inside. Now.”

Younger Tiff was right! The cockpit controls are just like Arkanoid! “All you have to do is touch it…” Older Tiff says, playing with the chair’s joystick, “…and the thing goes wherever you want.”

Before Grand Father’s huge-ass robot stomps the girls to the ground… they disappear into thin air.

The readings show they leapt into the future, exactly where they can’t go. Arrrghh! Now Grand Father is going to have to wait 16 years like an asshole!

The girls’ robot lands in a large body of water. “Everyone still in one piece?” Tiff asks as the robot mouth opens, exposing them to the lovely view of the…

…the, uh…

Well, I was wrong about them never going to the far future. I was also wrong about Older Tiff dying. For now.

“Holy fuckin’ shinola,” Mac gasps at the incredibly futuristic city before her, with the slick buildings and the hovering cars and trains. “…now THAT’S what I thought the year 2000 would look like.”

Final Thoughts

Oh jumping Jesus, where are they now? Holy snakes, dude! Jeepers creepers! I hope they brought their vax cards! There’s a joke that implies that the COVID pandemic will go on far into the future! That’s already not topical at all anymore, is it? Hmm…