PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED) -- Penny Brighton,
18, is something of a manic pixie, and by the end of this exceptionally
entertaining comic, she's on her way to becoming one guy's dream girl, even
though disaster follows her everywhere. Part rom-com, part pop-culture parody,
the story opens with Penny losing her job, parting ways with her friend/roommate
Helen, and moving into Helen's newly empty storage unit. After Penny snags a job
at the Laundromat-which is managed by Helen's surly 11-year-old brother-she
meets geeky desk clerk Walter, and an awkward romance is born. Penny's story
grew out of Hirsh and Ota's <i>Johnny Wander </i>webcomic, and they're in
perfect sync, delivering drily funny dialogue and outlandish visual comedy that
plays with conventions of film, manga, and geek culture (for her part, Penny
adores fantasy romance novels with titles like <i>Dragon Lust</i> and
<i>Succubus Seduced</i>, which she organizes “according to
hotness”). The plot veers into action-thriller territory toward the end,
blurring the lines between what's real and imagined, but Penny's idiosyncratic
exuberance carries the day, and her hapless attempts to get her life in order
should hit home with a broad range of readers.<br /><br /><br />

FOREWORD --
<i>Lucky Penny</i> features a young woman who's on her
own, but hasn't quite figured life out yet. It seems Penny's luck is all bad, as
she loses her job and her apartment, and ends up living in a storage unit and
working at the local laundromat. She develops a romantic interest in a young man
who works at the gym nearby, and trades barbs with the twelve-year-old who runs
the laundromat for his parents. There's also a bit of suspense when Penny's
storage unit is broken into, but despite the plot twists, this graphic novel
succeeds on the ability of Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota to bring Penny and the
other characters to life in a simple, quirky, charming way. Ota has worked on a
long list of publications, and she shows an expert hand in visual storytelling.
She draws Penny's eyes using a myriad of styles: huge and watery, as black dots
or narrow slits, with no pupils or extra-wide pupils. In a hysterical
three-panel sequence, she uses this range to perfectly express Penny's panicked
realization that she's packed her car keys deep within the contents of her
apartment. Penny is a poor soul who makes bad decisions, but she's lovable
throughout, and memorable even after the last page has been read. The graphic
novel universe should consider itself lucky to have
her.<br /><br /><br />

BOOKLIST -- Previously
published as a webcomic, Hirsh and Ota's<i> Lucky Penny</i> follows aimless
twenty-something Penny, who's anything but-you guessed it-lucky. Fired on the
day she's moving out of the apartment she didn't choose to vacate, Penny isn't
going great. Her friend Helen saves the day (and readers can assume this isn't
the first time), transferring her storage locker to Penny, who will live in it,
and getting Penny a job at her parents' laundromat. Things are starting to look
up! She even finds a cat she names Boyfriend, and there's actual boyfriend
potential in the cute receptionist who sneaks her into the community center. But
Penny's not lucky. How long can this last? The comic's pace occasionally
quickens unexpectedly, and wild antics ensue when Penny's newfound safety and
job security are threatened. Ota's black-and-white cartoons are stylish and
bright, and characters' faces are full of expression. Quirky Penny, like
characters in the romance novels she loves, is all heart, and she'll easily
charm readers with her smoking, drinking, train-wreck
style.<br /><br /><br />