“A Typical Girl: The Death and Life of Penelope Lichtenwald” is a sci-fi/fantasy webcomic series about a girl who died only to resurface one year later.
Picking up five years after her mysterious resurrection, the series chronicles the exploits of Penelope Lichtenwald, a 23-year-old girl haunted by her past and seemingly on a path of self-destruction, uncertain about her place in the world. A Typical Girl is set in a “secondary world” of high science and magic, scarred by the actions of super powered humans, a race of elves on the brink of extinction and many assorted and persecuted non-humans, pejoratively referred to as “bends.”
The story primarily takes place in the fictional metropolis of Jet City, a melting pot, dystopian city trying to crawl from the wreckage of mid-century failures, teetering on insolvency at the tail end of a long and arduous cold war characterized by a heightened suspicion of non-humans in the United States, aggressive security tactics and the ever prevalent threat of annihilation nuclear, or otherwise.
As she navigates this world, Penelope finds herself constantly challenged by the morally ambiguous issues of sexuality, relationships, family, social hierarchy, religion, violence all while wondering why and how she came back to life.
