Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #22! In the previous installment, the girls spend very little time in the future before a future-speak street peddler gets gunned down by the police (or the other way around, the aftermath was unclear). Mac takes them to the local library, where they discover the Tree of Knowledge. This very same Tree of Knowledge was mentioned in the very first few panels of the very first issue! How’s that for forward thinking?

The Tree of Knowledge tells them two bits of important information:

1) It’s the year 2171.

2) Cancer has been eradicated.

Good news for Mac. Too bad the cure for cancer involves a very invasive anal probe. I’m making that part up right now, but you never know.

Paper Girls, Issue #22 [July, 2018]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

“Good evening, Wari.”

Ahh, so the old woman looking out the window in the previous issue is, as it turns out, Wari from dinosaur times.

“I am happy to share that a visitor is here to see you,” announces her hovering eyeball robot. Wari wants the visitor to go away, but the visitor will not go away. He bursts into the suite like Kramer. Giddy-up!

“Take a break, Caregiver,” says the visitor. Jahpo, Grand Father, the dude with the Wu-Tang shirt. “My sister and I need to speak in private.”

SISTER?! This wasn’t known to me! I thought Jahpo was Wari’s son! Maybe we all thought that. The Paper Girls certainly thought that. “What do you want, Jahpo?” Wari asks sourly. Jahpo wants to know why she’s refusing her meds lately. “I’m older than dirt, kid. Now let me run out the clock in peace.”

Jahpo sits down and stretches in exasperation; tells her that he’s not in the mood for this shit today. Work was tough down at the salt mines, but she wouldn’t understand.

NOT UNDERSTAND?! Pah! “You’re the one who’s never had a clue about the truth, ‘baby brother’,” she spits at him, then yells something in her old tongue. Jahpo says she’s speaking gibberish again. Take your fucking medicine, grandma.

The old ruby-studded rotary phone starts ringing on the other side of the room. “The only person who calls me on that contraption is you,” Wari says as Jahpo traverses the room. It’s Alister the lackey! Did I know his name was Alister? Do I care? Both have the same answer. Anyway, it’s an emergency, sir. They found the girls. The “invaders”. They’re up your butt! HA HA HA HA!! But seriously, let’s go get them.

FOUND WHAT? HELLO? MUH TEETH? HELLO? DID YOU FIND MUH TEETH?

“I can’t believe it,” Mac with a look of calm reverence. “I’m not gonna die.”

“Um, not to be a total wet blanket, Mac… but we don’t know that for sure,” says Wet Blanket Erin. Piss-soaked blanket. Dang ol’ Wet Piss-Soaked Blanket. Erin thinks that the tree might be lying. It’s not the first time they were lied to. For instance, remember when Old Mac told the kids that she was dead from cancer? Was that true? Exactly.

Nope! Mac’s gonna find a doctor. They are under the Hippopotamus Oath to help. Do no harm, man. Curing cancer is the opposite of harming as far she is concerned.

“I’m just saying, we shouldn’t, you know… get our hopes up,” Erin says solemnly. “Heck and Naldo told us that our fate is our fate, and there’s no changing when we die.”

“Oh, you mean the same two guys who used some future crap to save your life?” Mac yells.

“Yeah, fate can go fuck itself,” KJ adds with a big “fate can go fuck itself” sneer.

Eww, not 100. You poop yourself when you’re 100.

Double-Oh Tiff doesn’t want to break up this happy-go-lucky movie moment, but they first need to focus on how to get the fuck back to the past.

“Hey Tree,” Young Tiff grabs an apple. “How do my friends and I get home to 1988?”

BLEEP BLOOP. “Only those who have been ordained by WATCH are permitted to traverse space and/or time.”

“And how do we do whatever the heck it is you just said?”

SNEEP SNOOP. “All four-dimensional itineraries must be approved by the organization’s current leader, Jahpo Thāpā.”

BRRRT!! Jahpo, huh? Good! He and they go way back!

Double-Oh Tiff gets angry at being out of the loop, which is weird to me because wouldn’t she remember all this shit she did at 12? The time travel rules don’t work that way, damnit. Whatever happened, happened!

“Cards, please?” asks the librarian entering the room. The librarian is a giant mummy/rocky The Thing hybrid. “Valid cards are required to visit the branches.” The girls freak out at this. Tiff tries to take the zapping stick she stole from 2000 and incapacitate the robot mummy librarian, but it doesn’t work at all. “That antique does not belong to you. That antique must be cataloged.”

Next, Tiff tries to slice the robot open with the sharp edge of the stick, and that works! The robot turns red hot, then explodes into a small blast of hot liquid.

Then the orbs hanging from the Tree of Knowledge burst. That’s probably not good at all.

Jahpo has met up with Alister to discuss the wherebouts of these time-travelling whipper snappers. It’s becoming apparent to Alister that the girls aren’t hiding from their sensors, but they just keep leaving the various time periods. Jahpo is skeptical, considering that “exploiting one of the smaller tears beyond Earth’s atmosphere” would cause them to “drown in most unpleasant waters”. But Alister shows him a hologram of the type of time-travelling craft that Heck and Naldo had always used.

Alister had his people comb through all sorts of data going back as far 1760. They found a record of that particular object entering the atmosphere in Stony Stream in the fall of 1988! Hotcha! A lead!

“And you’re sure these are the same monsters who killed Prioress?” Jahpo asks, arms behind his back in a posture of wary optimism. And Alister is pretty sure, although more scouting for physical evidence is needed. Take out your magnifying glasses and fine-tooth combs, gentlemen!

Hey, I’m also looking for the Spice Girls!

In downtown Future Cleveland, the girls are planning their next moves. Erin wants to find Wari and Jahpo. Mac thinks that’s loony, considering they were born 14,000 years ago. Erin isn’t detered by this because, as Mac may be aware, there’s a lot of time travel happening ‘round these parts.

Tiff likes the idea. “If Wari found some way to bring her kid here, she probably also knows how we can leave.”

KJ doesn’t care. She’s in love with Mac, obviously, and she wants to go find some of those over-the-counter cancer relief tablets. Mac declines, they can worry about her later. She wants everyone to stick together. Double-Oh Tiff wants to split up because they’re not very inconspicuous in their current situation. Tiff thinks splitting up is not a tubular idea at all.

Erin is on board with splitting up. She still has Tiff’s walkie-talkies in casr they need to communicate! Look, it even has that Morse code button. See? -… ..- – – …

Set a frequency and let’s a get a move on. Don’t use your real names over the radio, though. I suggest Baby, Ginger, Sporty, Scary, and Posh. Let’s go go go!

“Good luck assholes,” Mac says wryly through one.

“Stay safe, dummies,” Tiff says wryly through the other.

Even things go south, they’ll meet up at the library at dawn. For now, it’s KJ and Mac on one team, Erin and the Two Tiffs on the other. KJ and Mac start by following an ambulance, or what they think is an ambulance, to a hospital, or what they think is a hospital. “With our luck, it’s gonna turn out to be a snake store,” KJ complains. A snake store sounds cute.

…so… uh… better now than never… “Mac, wait. Before we do this… there’s something I have to tell you.”

Oh fuckshit. Mac gets worried. “It’s about that thing from another dimension. The… the one that touched me.” Oh fucking fuckshit. Shut up, shut up.

“And it made you hallucinate about the future?”

“It wasn’t a hallucination, Mac.”

“Isn’t that what all crazy people say?”

“Listen to me, goddamnit!” KJ grabs Mac’s arms desperately. She saw Dr. Braunstein’s face covered in blood. She saw the futuristic skyline. That stuff happened! “And I also saw something about us.”

Oh fucking fuckshitting fuckshit. Shut the fuck up.

Pucker up, buttercup.

KJ admits that it wasn’t exactly here. It was somewhere in the futuristic city. No, it has nothing to do with the cancer cure. No, not that at all. Listen, Mac. This is very important, so she’s just going to say it. Here it goes. One two three. OK, ahem. So, uh… so, uh, it’s unclear what it means exactly… heh heh, uhhmmm… but… ok… are you ready? … She saw the two of them k–

*kzzt* “ease help!” *kzzt*

Saved by the bell! “Those guys are already in trouble?” Mac says, looking annoyed, as she gets her radio out.

*kzzt* “Please help! Oh, Christ, she’s dead! She’s really” *kzzt*

“Who… who was that?” Mac asks, squinting at the radio.

“How do you not recognize that voice?” KJ says, eyes huge. “It was you.”

BRRRTTT!!

Final Thoughts

This is probably the most exciting volume of Paper Girls yet! Who’s dead?! Who’s dead?! Is it Mac’s girlfriend KJ? I hope not!