Kids on bikes in the 80s. It’s hard to go wrong with that formula. From E.T., The Goonies, Donnie Darko and, more recently, Stranger Things – there’s just something magical about adolescent moonlit treks set in what nowadays seem like simpler times. Released just a mere three months before the aforementioned Netflix hit series, the four young protagonists of Paper Girls share quite a few similarities with the members of the Hawkins Middle School A.V. Club.  Both groups, for one, are seemingly plucked from the mundane normalcy of everyday life by some unusual fate and, though they fight tooth and nail to return to the familiar boredom they took for granted once the weirdness sets in, a subtle finality looms over them like a whisper in the ear confirming that things can never again be as they were.

For the paper girls it all starts in the early morning hours of November 1, 1988, as each set out individually on their newspaper delivery routes unaware of the surreal collision course that awaits them. The ground beneath these hardworking kids is turned upside down in an instant by a hometown that is suddenly abandoned, apart from a few suspicious inter-dimensional travelers (with small, odd things that have half eaten apples on them) and enormous flying monsters circling the suburban Cleveland sky.  Could things get more bizarre?  Sure, but can the girls keep it together long enough to figure out what the heck is going on??? Read Paper Girls to find out – and if you like the ride, read on for even stranger things in the recently released second volume!