Paper Girls

Fandom
Name:	Paper Girls
Abbreviation(s):
Creator:	Brian K. Vaughan (Comics); Stephany Folsom and Brian K. Vaughan (TV Show)
Date(s):	Comic: October 7, 2015 to July 31, 2019 TV Show: July 29, 2022
Medium:	Comics, Live-action television show
Country of Origin:	United States
External Links:	[Girls (Comic)] on Wikipedia [Girls (TV)] on Wikipedia
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Paper Girls was a comic series by Brian K. Vaughan which ran from 2015 to 2019 and was later adapted into a TV show on Amazon Prime Video. It is a mystery science-fiction about four Paper Girls who get caught up in a conflict between two warring groups of time travelers.

Canon

Main Characters

• Erin Tieng
• MacKenzie "Mac" Coyle
• Karina "KJ" J. Brandman
• Tiffany "Tiff" Quilkin

Cancellation

Despite positive audience and critic responses, Amazon cancelled Paper Girls on September 9th 2022. It was originally announced that the show would be shopped to other potential networks, but the time without updates suggests this was unsuccessful.

Fandom

A small fandom around the comic series was present online from 2015, after the comics launched, with discussions of the comics found on discussion boards and forums like Comic Book Resources and social media platforms. The Paper Girls subreddit has been around since 2015 where fans originally discussed the comic; when the Amazon series was announced, it also became the subreddit for the show.

The show's announcement renewed interest in the comics and fannish interest in the series increased. A small fandom grew on Tumblr and as of January 2024, there are 172 works on Archive of Our Own under the Paper Girls (TV) tag.

Pairings

Canonical pairing, KJ Brandman/Mac Coyle, is the most popular pairing in the fandom and on AO3 it is tagged in 161 of the 172 works to-date. Platonic pairings are also relatively popular within the fandom:

Platonic

• KJ Brandman & Mac Coyle
• Mac Coyle & Erin Tieng
• KJ Brandman & Tiffany Quilkin
• KJ Brandman & Erin Tieng
• KJ Brandman & Mac Coyle & Tiffany Quilkin & Erin Tieng
• Dylan Coyle & Mac Coyle

Response to Cancellation

With the cancellation announcement, fans of the show voiced frustration over the lack of promotion for the show, feeling that it had been set up to fail. A particular cause of frustration was that its release date put the little marketing it did have in competition with Amazon's Rings of Power, which was heavily marketed by the company and for much longer.

Paper Girls didn't get a fair shake to succeed. It was drowned in Prime Video's own marketing for Rings of Power. Viewers missed out on a sweet, exciting series about a group of compelling kids on a journey that could capture anyone's imagination.

Joshua M. Patton 

[producermaddy]
I think paper girls would have done better on Netflix. More people would have been talking about it and I think paper girls on prime had no marketing and many people never heard of it

[24601animalxing]

Yea,I had never heard of it until December when I saw it in a tiktok compilation and people were asking what the show was. It’s ridiculous how little marketing the show got .

[ColAlexTrast]

I was actually looking out for it, but it was marketed so poorly that it fell off my radar and I didn't know it was out until 3 weeks or so after premier

Fanworks

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Fan Art

• sincerely yours, the paper girls, ^{Archived version} by Patcho418. Erin, KJ, Mac and Tiffany drawn in one of the group poses from the film The Breakfast Club

Fan Vids

• Smells Like Teen Spirit • We're paper girls, so we stick together by Green Penguin

Archives and Communities

• Paper Girls (TV) on Archive of Our Own
• Paper Girls (Comics) only on Archive of Our Own
• r/PaperGirls on Reddit
• Paper Girls tag at TikTok
• Paper Girls tag at Tumblr