Paper Girls Volume 2 follows our titular troop of newspaper delivery-girls into the future, where they meet the grown-up version of one of them and try to figure out what is going on in their world. Somehow, Vaughan manages to not only set up a world in the process of being invaded by some other forces and a number of mysteries about the groups acting on the girls, but a weirdly difficult realization of self caused by young Erin's feelings about seeing her future self - forty, single, still living in her home town. Mac gets to see some future consequences for herself, too, but Erin's the one we spend more time with, and it's a little to painful to read - is anyone exactly who they thought they'd be as children? What would you want to say to a 13 year old version of yourself, and could you actually say it, knowing that any real changes might change your present self irrevocably?
Chiang's illustrations are lush and vivid, and his colour schemes are gorgeous. There's a recurring theme of teeny tiny earth creatures accidentally blown up by the time-travel folding that's going on, and that's arresting, in a slightly squeamish way, but the visuals are overall just lovely. I've been trying to focus on taking in more of the art when I read comics, instead of just skimming it on the way to the next important text, and it's definitely rewarding here.
Really, my only complaint here is how long I'm going to need to wait until I get to read more of it, which is a good problem to have, I guess! It's five stars for me, and I might re-read it tonight to see what else I can pick up on.
This review was crossposted at CannonballRead, where I'm racing to read and review 52 books this year.
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