‘Lucky Penny: Color Edition’ TPB (review)

Written by Ananth Hirsh
Art by Yuko Ota
Colors by Julia Hagerty
Published by Oni Press

The Internet tells me that Lucky Penny has been around at least since a successful Kickstarter campaign about seven or eight years back.

It was black and white, originally, but my introduction to Ms. Penny Brighton today came from the Lucky Penny: Color Edition.

Veteran webcomics creators Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota wrote and drew the story and the new color for this edition comes courtesy of Julia Hagerty.

And I’ll be honest with you—that color makes a world of difference.

Some comics look better in black and white, others in color. An online comparison of pages from the black and white version and this current version shows that this is definitely one of the latter. In vibrant color, the already splendid Manga-inspired artwork just pops from every page!

Lucky Penny is the story of a particularly unlucky young woman for whom just about everything goes wrong in a short period of time.

She loses her apartment and her job at the same time, for example, but being the plucky, creative heroine of the story, Penny sets up surreptitious residence in a self-storage locker even as she takes in a cat she rescues from abusers and names “Boyfriend.”

You see, although obsessed with fantasy romance novels, Penny has never actually had a boyfriend.

In order to get her clothes washed free, she talks her way into a job at a laundromat presided over by a punk kid with whom she has a history but it’s when she also talks her way into a local gym in order to get free showers, that she meets the shy desk clerk there, Walter. A nerdy, awkward romance, complete with D&D, begins to bloom.

The story from there follows Penny’s attempts to eradicate her seemingly endless bad luck while making progress toward successful adulting and a consummated relationship with her meek new beau.

Lucky Penny provides the reader a full afternoon of amusement park rides with up and down emotions, endless goofy humor, some warm fuzzies, and a dose or three of righteous anger and indignation.

And the inventive usage of color throughout this particular edition makes the sharp writing and assured storytelling in the artwork that much more impressive.

Booksteve recommends.