Paper Girls, Issue #28

* Part 3 of 5 of the Paper Girls Volume 6 storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #28! In the previous installment…

KJ hides in the bushes while a teenage Charlotte Spachefski fawns over her childhood love, the homosexual Teenage Mutant Jude. He and KJ team up to do whatever they’re gonna do. Fight some crime. w/e

Mac is gettin help from Dr. Braunstein to find her time travel capsule before the gamma ray burst destroys the world. Braunstein’s story may be over, but Mac’s ain’t.

Tiff is going to send messages in her friends’ dreams with the help of a duplicate 19-year-old Erin, and duplicate adult KJ, and her actual elderly self. It’s less complicated than it sounds.

Erin Folds her way into Jahpo’s airship. So, good news, she is back in 1988! The bad news is that this Bad News Motherfucker is pointing a gun at her head. It’s like, Erin is no stranger to being shot! She eats bullets for breakfast!

Without further ado…

Paper Girls, Issue #28 [May, 2019]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

This looks like it’s going to be a fucking excellent issue. Each girl gets her own panel on each page, from top to bottom. Tiff, Mac, KJ, and Erin, in that order. Due to the unorthodox storytelling, I’ll focus on one girl at a time.

Tiff

“Why are we here?”

“Now there’s a question old as time,” Old Tiff responds. Here’s what “here” is anyway: Stony Stream. Her old neighborhood. “Though these days, it’s way more ‘stream’ than ‘stony’,” says 19-year-old Erin, hereby referred to as “19 Erin”. The group straps Tiff into the chair and explains that this particular spot is a good hub for four-dimensional communication. Why? Because we said so, that’s why, you little punk.

Tiff can’t believe that this contraption is going to let her communicate with the other three girls, anywhere between the beginning and end of time, wherever they all are right now. “And the message you need to deliver is this: return to the beginning.” When asked what that means, it means go to the house where they found that time capsule. At least one girl needs to do that, and Tiff needs to keep the message simple since the dreams tend to twist and turn the phrasing all dreamlike. It might, for example, be delivered as “If you want to get back home, you have to moonwalk.”

Younger Erin suggests starting with Erin. The real Erin. Erin Prime. Tiff tries, and…

…suddenly the reality around them splits in two…

You go gurl! Keep on busting this fucking place up. Kill us all and bury us in a pile of rubble.

“But we accidentally just blew chunks of the future into that time hole. You recognize where it opened to, right?” Tiff says incredulously as she takes her VR helmet off.

The rip in reality showed a flash of the giant hill with the cropped out demon holding an apple from prehistory. “You people must be who Wari thought was sending her stuff!” Tiff realizes. The Dreamwomen. 19 Erin doesn’t even know who Wari is, but Old Tiff facepalms and remembers the old version of Wari from 2171. Why she doesn’t remember younger prehistoric Wari is explained as follows, and will forever explain why older versions of the kids can’t remember shit about their own pasts.

“Tiffany, your older self doesn’t remember any of your extra-temporal exploits before she encountered you as an adult in the year 2000.”

“Because all of this trauma will be erased before you and your friends are returned home safely.”

PLOT HOLE! BRIAN K. VAUGHAN AND HIS “OH SHIT, I GOTTA FIGURE THIS ONE OUT” PLOT HOLE! THERE IT IS!

“So my friends and I are getting our brains washed by the bad guys as part of your surrender?” Tiff asks, still rather incredulous. She is told it’s not a surrender, it’s a truce. Know the difference? One involves surrendering, and the other is a full on surrender! Heh heh.

Tiff doesn’t want to forget everything the four of them have been through together. She doesn’t want to forget everything that made them friends. But, the bottom line is this: things happened because they happened. There’s no changing what happened. Get back in the fucking chair.

“I guess we all grow up to be Old-Timers, huh?” Tiff sneers. The rest of the group kind of sneers back. Then a yellow square Folding appears behind them.

“Is it finally happening?” asks 19 Erin.

“Yep,” replies Old Tiff. “The final domino has been tipped.”

Tiff sees KJ and Jude through the portal. KJ reaches forward. “NOOOO! It’s a trap!” Tiff screams.

Then silence.

Mac

“Why are we here?”

“I like to think it’s fate,” Braunstein responds. Mac says that sounds hella unscientific. I’m inclined to agree. I’m so inclined that I’m falling backwards on my ass.

Braunstein looks tired. “Sure, maybe you and your friends happened to stumble onto that time machine, but I like to think the universe needed it to happen.” She continues to get philosophical, saying something I’ve read dozens of times during my own fun existential crises: the Earth came and went in the blink of an eye with respect to the lifespan of the universe, and we sentient beings got to be part of it for a short while against astronomically impossible odds.

The two climb a big ol’ rock and Braunstein grabs her head in pain halfway up. “Doc? You ok?”

…suddenly the reality around them splits in two…

The end of the world is getting interrupted by the end of the world! Run for your life!

Braunstein’s nose starts bleeding and she seems to be somewhere else entirely. “Her and her precious boy. I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten how beautiful it was.” She topples backward into Mac’s arms. “Don’t… be afraid,” Braunstein continues, dying. “It’s not… as scary… as you think.”

Mac loses her shit a little bit.

“I promise… it doesn’t even… hurt. Almost feels… exciting? Like… something wonderful… is about to…”

That’s it. Mac lays her down gently on the ground, takes her cane, and heads to the time capsule at the top of the big ol’ rock. “Welcome, authorized guest!” it chirps. “Destination?”

“Back home,” Mac says, strapping into the chair. “Ass-crack of the morning on November 1, 1988. Make it snappy.”

Then an explosion.

Then silence.

“Why are we here?”

“Who gives a shit?” Jude responds. “Philosophers don’t last long in my line of work.”

No, not that, jerkoff. “I mean, why did you drag me to Edgewater, where the acne crowd goes to lock braces?”

Ah, yes. Sorry. It’s because Jude’s craft crashed in the nearby lake, so they set up camp in this spot. The unfortunately location of all the pimply, macking teenagers is just something that she’ll need to overlook. “Heck and Naldo are probably still out scavenging for parts, but they should be back soon.”

“Cool, it’d be good to see some familiar faces,” KJ says, trailing Jude on the beach. Jude asks why she only met them and not him, but KJ doesn’t want to say. It’s hard to tell someone that they died prematurely, you know? Like so much ejaculate.

She apologizes and then tells him.

…and then the reality around them splits in two…

Hey, the 20th century wasn’t bad. There was the Summer of Love! And Pong!

KJ wishes she could help in some way, but Jude knows that when you die is when you die. “Not like I was destined for a long life anyway.” Heeeyyyy, buddy. Don’t say that! You’re… uhm… you’ve got… like, you’re all right! Y’know?

“You have the same disease as my… my girlfriend. The one some time travelers get?”

“Most travelers by the time my generation rolls around,” Jude says. Not much to do about it. No cure and all that.

“If time travel is pretty much a death sentence, why do you guys do it?”

“For all the kids who come after us.” It’s like, why does anyone do anything? For future generations! Unless you’re a republican, then you just look out for #1 and take everything you can for yourself. Whoops, I didn’t mean to get political! Or did I?

So Jude steals some old technology from the past if it helps the poor saps in the future. He looks sad for a minute, then asks KJ to promise not to say anything about his death to his boyfriend. Anyway, time to boogie before time continues ripping them new assholes.

“Can I ask one last thing? Do my boys at least get revenge on whatever asshole eventually does me in?”

“The Old-Timer who murders you, he… he gets shot,” she says. Ha, yeah! By her! Say something! You avenged Jude’s death and you didn’t even know it! SAY SOMETHING!

She doesn’t. She’s seen too much death in the last few days, she doesn’t want to dwell on it.

Jude continues forward, but KJ spots a roundish violet Folding opening next to her. “Um, Jude?”

The Folding opens wide. Super wide. The other side is Tiff screaming and holding her head.

“KJ, don’t!” Jude yells.

“It’s all right,” KJ responds, remembering all her future flashes. “I’ve seen this before.”

KJ reaches toward the portal.

Then silence.

Erin

“Why are we here?”

“I was rather hoping you could tell us why we’ve ended up in this great beyond,” Jahpo responds, lowering his gun. “Miss…?”

Erin doesn’t give her name. Old-Timers are bad news! Pleading the fifth from now on! Lawyer time!

“Grand Father,” Cardinal yells, pointing her Stargate Jaffa staff at Erin, “she’s carrying the same satchel as the young ones who attacked me in 001988!”

Ah well, that’s a fly in the ointment. Jahpo can tell Erin’s just an innocent bystander caught up in this mess by accident… right?… well?…

“Please, I just want to see my friends again,” Erin says meekly, gripping her bag. Jahpo assures her that they’ll try their best. “For now,” he motions toward a curtain, “would you like to see our dinosaurs?”

Pffft. F that! Old-Timers are bad news!

Jahpo doesn’t want to hurt her. Heck, he’s not that militant about preserving the past! That got all blown out of proportion! Over time, the Old-Timers learned that you can rescue past species from extinction without significantly altering the future anyway. Here, check out these cool ass dinosaurs they’re keeping on the ship for some reason. They look happy, and–

…suddenly the reality around them splits in two…

Looks like this was the best of the post-reality splitting panels! Thank you and good night.

The rift appears to have cracked open a holding cell of various pyramid monsters and Editrixes and other lovely creatures that we’ve seen before that are shaped like 3D polygons. They don’t work for the Old-Timers, as Erin originally thought. They work alongside them… but they seem pissed, so Jahpo tries to squirrel Erin away to somewhere else.

“Our four-dimensional guests first revealed themselves to the world when I was about your age, on the day we all discovered that time travel was possible,” Jahpo explains. “What we call the Editrixes helped us understand the awesome responsibilties that come with–”

“Bullshit!” Erin interjects. “Time travel wasn’t ‘discovered’, it was invented… by the woman who raised you!”

This really takes Jahpo aback. “What the hell did you just say?” he says, looking slightly angry. Erin claims that she barely understands whatever stupid war they’ve been fighting for years, “but I still seem to know way more than you.”

After claiming that Erin isn’t making any sense, he’s about to say that his mother wasn’t an inventor – that she was something else – but he is interrupted by Cardinal’s scream. One of dem pyramid monsters that made KJ see the future has grabbed hold of her.

“Don’t shoot!” Erin yells. “It’s not trying to hurt her!”

“We don’t know what it’s doing!” Jahpo yells back, readying his gun. He pushes Erin back and starts unloading bullets into this floating upside-down pyramid. That’s probably not a good idea. The bullet hole starts oozing some black fluid and little triangles, circles, and squares made out of light start swirling out from within, forming a helix pattern.

Both Jahpo and Erin utter the same thing: “Oh crap…”

Then an explosion.

Then silence.