Lucky Penny
by Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota

As last month was pretty much a failure on the books front, I decided to turn to a medium that has helped me out of slumps before: comics. At the start of the month, Tim and I treated ourselves to a trip to Forbidden Planet, where we spent far too much on comics. This was one of the random books I picked up.

The choice wasn’t completely out of the blue. I’ve read a few things from Oni Press and always enjoyed them – Scott Pilgrim and Ivy being cases in point. Like Scott Pilgrim, Lucky Penny is about someone in their early adulthood struggling to figure out life and largely failing. But without superpowers.

Penny Brighton loses her job and her roommate on the same day and, no longer able to afford rent, decides to move into a friend’s storage unit. She talks her way into a job at a launderette and flirts with a guy at the local gym to get free showers there. She adopts a stray cat for company. She fends off would-be looters most nights. She’s surviving, but can she really keep this up? Can she turn life into something better than survival?

It’s a sweet tale about human relationships and trying to turn around failure. The art is simple and expressive and a lot of fun.

Published 2016 by Oni Press.

Source: Forbidden Planet, Bristol.