We’re just days out from the premiere of Amazon’s Paper Girls, the streaming platform’s newest upcoming miniseries. For anyone unfamiliar with the property, or for prospective viewers who have read the comic and want to know what to expect going into the show, here’s the spoiler-free background and basics, which will (hopefully) give you everything you need.
So, what is Paper Girls?
Paper Girls is a sci-fi adventure series, adapted from the Image Comics series by writer Brian K. Vaughan, known for his work on Y: The Last Man and Saga, and Eisner Award-winning artist Cliff Chiang, who collaborated with Brian Azzarello on the New 52 relaunch of Wonder Woman. The Paper Girls comic began publication in October 2015 and ran for 30 issues, concluding in July 2019.
If you’ve seen the trailers for Amazon’s series (and/or read the comic), you likely have some idea of what to expect: while the series is initially fairly deeply rooted in 80s culture, its protagonists are quickly and unwillingly swept up into a deadly conflict across time. There’s a lot more to it, but basically, the series follows its titular Kid Gang* of four pre-teens –Erin, KJ, Mac, and Tiff– who deliver newspapers in the early hours of November 1, 1988 in the fictional town of Stony Stream, Ohio. Desperately trying to return to their own time, the girls must confront their relationships with each other, come to terms with their future successes and failures, and face their own uncertain futures.
So… what isn’t Paper Girls?
I’d like to address this now: Paper Girls is not Stranger Things. Though the two series’ settings and focus on a group of young protagonists will likely (and seemingly already have) invite comparison and questions of originality, they’re much more different than they are similar. Paper Girls’ first issue predates the premiere of Stranger Things by about a year, and while both series are very 80s inspired, the former leans more toward hard sci-fi and adjusts its setting frequently, whereas the latter is more explicitly focused on its 80s roots, particularly the horror stories of Stephen King and the general pop culture of the decade. While this is still a key element in Paper Girls, especially in the way that it informs the protagonists’ worldviews, it is not as prominent, acting more as a springboard than a celebrated focal point.
Amazon’s series is also not a direct 1:1 translation of the comic. Without getting into spoilers, the Amazon series is a loose adaptation primarily of the first two-thirds-ish of the Image series. Readers of the comic will recognize major events that have been translated over, and for the most part, the atmosphere and spirit of the characters have been faithfully retained, but other major events are glossed over (at least for now) or reimagined. Certain plot points, especially the situations in which the protagonists meet and interact with prominent supporting players, are radically different between comic and live-action, and new characters are introduced in the Amazon series to fill the roles of some of the comic’s supporting cast.
*What is a “Kid Gang” anyway?
The Kid Gang as a concept has existed in comics and popular fiction for decades and typically consists of a handful of children/young teens who travel and adventure together, often undergoing comparable journeys of personal growth and/or self-discovery. The trope frequently places its characters into archetypal roles: the leader, the muscle, the brains, and the comic relief. (See also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveManBand.)
The earliest examples of the Kid Gang trope came with Marvel’s Young Allies in 1941 and the first incarnation of DC’s Newsboy Legion in 1941, both created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. A legacy version of the Newsboy Legion was introduced by Kirby in 1970 as part of his Fourth World stories for DC. The Kid Gang trope was especially prominent in the 1980s, with young protagonists acting as the central focus of the Stephen King short story “The Body” in 1982 and his novel It in 1986, as well as their respective film adaptations (Stand By Me, also released in 1986, the It miniseries in 1990, and the big-budget films in 2017 and 2019). Comic teams such as the Teen Titans, the early X-Men, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles also further contributed to the concept’s popularity. For a bit more on the concept, here’s a great breakdown by Comic Tropes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4U52ooZba8.
Stranger Things, of course, pays homage to this trope, and the Paper Girls comic and TV series use the concept to great effect, breaking away from rigid archetypal roles for its protagonists and giving each of the four central girls their own moments of levity, physicality, and leadership, as well as using the series’ heavy focus on time travel as a unique means of introducing conflicts, developing characters, and ramping up tension.
The Girls
This series’ group of protagonists consists of four characters; Erin Tieng (Riley Lai Nelet) is the newest of the four titular paper girls, and the first to whom we are introduced. She exhibits a strong attachment to her family, especially her mother and younger sister. Mackenzie “Mac” Coyle (Sofia Rosinsky) is the group’s resident punk, whom Erin recognizes as the first girl to have picked up a paper route in Stony Stream. She is abrasive, aggressive, and foul-mouthed (think Edward Furlong’s John Connor). Tiffany Quilkin (Camryn Jones) is essentially the group’s tech-head, providing them with the walkie-talkies they use early in the comics and for a significant portion of the Amazon series. In the comics, Tiffany is obsessed with the video game Arkanoid, frequently acts as the voice of reason, and dreams of attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Finally, field hockey player KJ Brandman (Fina Strazza) rounds out the gang. KJ toes the line between level-headed and impulsive, occasionally displaying a rashness and tendency towards violent behavior that surprises her friends.
What’s the difference?
Aside from the story changes, the two versions of the Paper Girls story offer slight differences in their experiences, some the result of adaptation and others the result of different formats. For a comparatively streamlined experience, presented on screen and with a fantastic group of young actresses (who, incidentally, look like they were pulled right off the comics pages) the Amazon series may be the better place to start, as it takes a bit more time to ease you into some of the weirder and more fantastical elements that appear much earlier on in the comics.
For the original experience, delivered through the complete story paired with Cliff Chiang’s incredible art, it’s best to jump into the comics first. The plots of the series diverge sharply and Vaughan and Chiang lean into the surreal and unusual pretty early, with inclusions such as Erin’s often-bizarre dream sequences peppered throughout the early issues. These sequences are less present in the Amazon series. The comics also include some fun backup material in the form of the letters column, here presented as a series of cheeky, period-appropriate letters pages published by the fictional American Newspaper Delivery Guild (fun fact: early in the comic’s publication history, readers could request a physical membership card for the ANDG by mail, essentially joining the Paper Girls fan club). Obviously it’s up to personal preference which you choose first, and both are equally valid choices with their own distinct strengths.
That about wraps it up for the basic info you need before the premiere of Amazon’s Paper Girls. If you’re at all interested in some time travel hijinks, heavy introspection, or zany sci-fi adventures with The Friends We Made Along the Way, this is the show for you.
The series drops on Amazon Prime Video this Friday, July 29.
