Paper Girls

On the morning after Halloween 1988, four twelve-year-old paper girls — Erin, Mac, KJ, and Tiffany — meet in the predawn dark to throw their routes. By sunrise, they’ve seen a time machine, met their future selves, and been declared missing persons in a war that spans centuries.

Paper Girls is the Eisner Award-winning thirty-issue series by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, published by Image Comics from 2015 to 2019. It’s Stand By Me meets War of the Worlds — a coming-of-age story about four ordinary kids caught in a conflict between factions fighting across the entire timeline of human history.

Bikes, Walkie-Talkies, and Time Travel

The genius of Paper Girls is that it never forgets its heroes are children. These four girls argue about boys, dodge parents, and worry about school — even as they’re being chased through the ages by armored soldiers, strange creatures, and versions of themselves they never wanted to meet. Chiang’s art gives each girl a distinct silhouette and personality, and his clean linework makes both 1988 Ohio and the far-future cityscapes feel equally real. Matt Wilson’s luminous colors earned the book awards of their own, making every era glow.

The series became one of the defining creator-owned hits of the 2010s — adapted by Amazon into a Prime Video series in 2022 — and its ending, like all of Vaughan’s best work, rewards rereading. The complete saga is collected in Paper Girls: The Complete Story, a single omnibus edition from Image Comics. Pick it up for the nostalgia, stay for the time war, and remember: the future is never as far away as it seems.