Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Hugo Nominee Paper Girls. Written by Brian K. Vaughan. Art by Cliff Chiang and Dee Cunliffe. Lettering by Jared K. Fletcher.
Graphic Novel Review by Kerey McKenna.

Recently I was scrolling through my Facebook feed when I noticed Cynthia Shaffer over at Reel Urban News had posted a question to her friends: under a picture from Sandlot, a movie about adolescent boys in the 60’s playing pick-up baseball, a movie that I will remember forever, forever, FOREVER, Ms. Shaffer asked, “The Sandlot. Stand By Me. The Wonder Years. Little Rascals. I have a question. Why aren't there any movies/shows like those with girls?” And there were some interesting responses.

Some completely missed the point and named stories about groups of kids that have one or two girls in the group. Some pointed out stories about individual young women (Annie, Ann of Green Gables, or My Girl) that center around a female lead but aren’t really an ensemble of young women. Others, myself included, listed TV Shows, books, and cartoons that did deal with groups of young women (Little Women, Facts of Life, Babysitters Club, and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic). Some commentators posited that there are fewer stories because adolescent girls don’t roam around having adventures in packs the way adolescent boys do. They argued that even when girls form into cliques the relationships are complicated mixes of friends, frenemies, and enemies in constant internal and external conflicts that would stymie Niccolo Machiavelli.

It was this discussion about the dearth of nostalgic stories about roaming girls having adventures that made the title Paper Girls jump out from the list of this year's Hugo nominees for best Graphic (i.e. Comic Book) Story. Cynthia, I found it: Stranger Things, but all the heroes are girls.

Volume 1 begins in the small town of Stony Stream, Ohio in the wee hours of November 1st, 1988, a time of transition for our heroines and for our culture. It was a time when most people still got their news from print media and people entrusted daily delivery of their morning paper to enterprising children. In the 1980’s, before sensationalism around “Stranger Danger” kept more children home under the watchful eyes of helicopter parents, it’s easy to imagine “Free Range Children” pedaling across town on BMX bikes getting into all manner of misadventures.

Traditionally November 1st is also when All Hallows Eve, the night of the infernal hedonism, gives way to All Saints Day, a time of religious reflection and prayer. But for four tween-age girls with paper routes, it is “Hell Morning.” Halloween hasn’t really ended yet and their usual routes are littered with TP and roaming gangs of teenage boys still looking to cause mischief and mayhem.

THRILLER! DILLER NIGHT!

Seeking safety in numbers, four paper girls team up to make their appointed rounds. There is Mackenzie “Mac” Coyle, who became the town’s first paper girl when she inherited a route from her brother. Rough around the edges and from a troubled home, she seems to have picked up all the bad habits that the boys over at Stranger Things were spared to make them more marketable to modern audiences. Karina, “KJ,” is Mac’s lancer and never goes anywhere without her trusty field hockey stick. Tiffany Quilkin is the nerd of the group, racking up high scores on her NES and supplying the group with expensive CBs from Radio Shack. The “New Kid” is Erin Tieng, who has very vivid and surreal (perhaps prophetic?) dreams.

In the pre-dawn hours of post-Halloween, the girls will face things much more dangerous than gangs of teenage hoodlums: mysterious hooded figures stealing electronics, unaccountable artifacts in suburbia, knights in shining armor that speak in text message shorthand, and beings from the fourth dimension with alien geometries. As a wise man once said “strange things are afoot at the Circle K.”

The girls, and the reader, are always kept on edge as the bizarre goings-on escalate in frequency and danger. Volume 1 ends with a cliffhanger that had me immediately tapping the button on my Kindle to buy the next volume. And the one after that and the one after that. I have not been this excited for the next installment of 80’s sci-fi since Doc Brown whisked Marty McFly away in a flying Delorean.

I’d love to start talking about the rest of the series...including the current Hugo nominee, Volume 3, but the surprises and plot twists are so exciting I would hate to spoil them.

With the success of Stranger Things and the It remake (the argument about which one ripped the other one off is a snake swallowing its own tail), I’m sure we are in for more period pieces about kids on bikes fighting the supernatural, with a Greatest Hits of the ‘80s soundtrack. To dismiss Paper Girls as a mere gender-swapped gimmick riding the coattails of better works would be a double disservice. A disservice to an excellent work of science fiction/horror and a disservice to yourself for not reading it and robbing yourself of the experience.

Volume 1 was a Hugo finalist last year but lost out to Marjorie Liu’s Monstress. Here’s hoping that Volume 3 takes the silver rocket on Sunday.

In the meantime, stay tuned to Nerds who Read for more NOT THE HUGO Awards from Editor-in-Chief Michael Isenberg, along with more reviews by me of actual Hugo nominees.

Kerey McKenna is a contributing reviewer to Nerds who Read and SMOF for the annual Watch City Steampunk Festival. Check it out at www.watchcityfestival.com.