They're finally back. Erin, MacKenzie, KJ and Tiffany return in this Paper Girls Volume 2 retro 1980s sci-fi throwback tale, set in Midwest Americana (Ohio), and they are so in over their heads that they don't even know "when" they are anymore. There are large prehistoric birds hovering above, monstrous giant worms fighting one another amidst downtown's buildings, and mysterious characters - a bearded man and a dark haired woman - who know more about this time traveling paradox and alternate dimension that has overtaken the community than we do.
Writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist/illustrator Cliff Chiang stay consistent with the tone and the visual world they created in Volume 1 of this series, and the result is more of the sassy dialogue between the girls, elements of the fantastic and the supernatural, and chapter ending cliffhangers, something that Vaughan is well known for. His titular heroines find themselves some twenty-eight years in the future, and when they arrive in 2016, they run into the adult version of Erin, an event that confuses and perplexes them as well as us. There is also an alternate Erin, same age as the original, wearing a strange suit and speaking an alien language no one understands. The group is unsure whom to trust and how to get to safety, which, according to the new mysterious Erin, is "sixty-eight thousand years from now."
Paper Girls Volume 2 delivers great zingers and pop-culture references (many of the home lawns the girls come across have "Hillary for President" ads embedded in them), warnings written on objects ("Don't trust other Erin!!!") hovering in new portals of time/space, and even a helicopter ride that will place the heroines in an altogether new setting. The narrative may not be easy to comprehend and at times can perhaps be a little confusing, but it is always fun and never boring. In today's market of oversaturated and overwritten comics, that is certainly no small feat.
B-
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