Princeless, Paper Girls

Princeless 1-4

After raving about Jeremy Whitely’s inspiring work on Unstoppable Wasp, I borrowed his first collection of Princeless from the local library.  (Use your library! It’s a great resource.)  As with Wasp, this is utterly delightful.  Princess Adrienne starts the comic locked in a tower that’s guarded by a dragon, ostensibly waiting for a prince to come rescue her.  As she had spent her childhood poking holes in the absurdity of such a premise (“That’s ludicrous! The cost of the tower alone would more than cover a dowry!”), it isn’t long before she rejects her situation and finds her own way out of the prison, and sets off with her dragon (their relationship is hardly one of captor/captive) to rescue her other sisters.  Along the way, she befriends a young blacksmith who’s also looking for something more out of her life.

It’s all wonderful.  This was nominated for two Eisners, including Best Comic for Ages 8-12.  But this 40-year old is just as hooked. Seriously considering buy the whole run, currently seven TPBs worth of story.  It’s certainly more refreshing than Deadly Class (which I came really close to buying at the store this week).  I’m definitely going to give this to one of my cousin’s kids for Christmas.  

Paper Girls 1-9

Sigh. How many times can I start a Brian K Vaughan series and not finish it?  (I’m going to ask this again when I get to Saga in a few days/weeks.)  Actually, Paper Girls is better than a lot of Vaughan’s other series on reread, even though I quit buying it earlier than most.  (I lasted longer with Ex Machina, Saga, Y the Last Man, and Runaways.  Though Runaways was good the whole time.)  I read through these issues in one sitting with no desire to stop reading.  It’s definitely better than monthly installments. Too much is lost to memory with the 30-day pause between issues.  

In summary, four 12-year old paper delivery girls from 1988 find themselves mixed up in a war between an older group of people from the future who believe time travel shouldn’t be used and a younger generation who have no qualms about jumping around the time stream.  It’s really dense, with no time for them to really think. Just look at a sample of what happens to them in the first nine issues:

Erin, KJ, Mac, and Tiffany find a time machine.  Erin gets shot by Mac’s stepmother. She gets saved by some time travellers.  They encounter flying dinosaurs. They get thrown into the future and meet a 40-year old Erin.  Giant tardigrades (Godzilla-size) fight each other in the city. Mac learns she dies of cancer in four years.  They meet a clone of Erin from waaaay in the future. A message from KJ tells them not to trust the other Erin.  But which other Erin?

All of this appears to happen in the span of around 4 hours.  No wonder I lost track of what was going on. Want to know what happen next, don’t want to buy more, yadda yadda.  It goes on that list.

Two more points: Cliff Chiang’s art is as wonderful as always.  There’s nothing flashy about it, it’s just beautiful and perfect.

So much goodness in the details of the room and the facial expressions.

And Mac’s reaction to the news thirty years in her future is hilarious.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice