I’m always looking forward to the next great all-ages comic – something I can picture myself enjoying as a kid as well as now, and can recommend to others however long they’ve been on the planet. But while it does have its moments – and I really want to like it – “Penny Dora & The Wishing Box” from Image Comics falls short of that title.
Written by Michael Stock
Illustrated by Sina GraceOnce upon a time, on the day before Christmas, a young girl named Penny Dora found a mysterious box on her front doorstep. A magic box with the power to grant wishes. But what she’s about to learn is the true (and creepy) meaning of “be careful what you wish for.” An all-ages fantasy/adventure book for fans of Coraline and Courtney Crumrin
I can definitely see what this comic is going for. A little silly, a little eerie, and a lot heartwarming; a story about a girl who’s confounded by getting exactly what she wants one magical Christmas. And things do seem to be heading in that direction in the first few pages of the comic. Penny is likeable but not too sweet, a bit frustrated with her mother for not caring about the holiday. Sina Grace portrays both of them with an edge, a touch of bitchface; and it’s reassuring, at this early moment, to see the characters come across as far from perfect. When the wishing box works its magic, the all-at-once wish fulfillment is appropriately over the top, but contains a solid dose of emotionality. This mother and daughter just want to be part of a family; that’s our hook.
But everything falls apart in the middle section. As Penny sets about hiding the box from view – it’s got some alarming nocturnal tendencies – her actions are portrayed in the art as well as summed up in the captions. Each beat feels ponderous, delivered twice from two different sources. What makes it all the more frustrating is that we know from “Little Depressed Boy” that Grace’s art can carry wordless moments beautifully. His frittered lines and subtle compositions get across a lot of mood and atmosphere all on their own; but when presided over by a caption, the magic is lost.
When, a few page-flips later, the narration and art aren’t mirroring each other anymore, it seems the overall rhythm has been thrown off. Penny’s interactions with her friend have an odd, stilted quality, and it’s hard to tell why she’s so anxious to keep the box hidden from her mother, who has no interest in the thing. Penny’s emotions seem to well up from nowhere and disappear in a flash; and as able as Grace’s art is at capturing all these different shades – all the while maintaining that vague sinister quality, like this girl isn’t entirely on the level – following Penny’s line of thinking still feels like mental gymnastics.
The ending brings us right back to the realm of the cute; and while the joke it rests on has come up more than once over the course of the comic, the feeling of circularity is heartening. The familiar, understated quality that makes “Little Depressed Boy” great seems to come through here; we’re looking at a relatively mundane scene in a kitchen at night, but it’s been given enough room to breathe that it seems to have resonance beyond its particulars. Tamra Bonvillain’s vibrant palette is scaled down beautifully here, and the appeal of the first few pages is back with a vengeance; but after such a rocky middle, the comic as a whole doesn’t seem to hold together.
We’ve yet to invent a word for wanting to like something because you can see what it’s trying to do, but ultimately being disappointed because it’s falling short. Until we do, I haven’t got much in the way of a pithy summary for this book. I do know that charm is an elusive quality; you can’t add it to a comic like a coat of varnish. It emerges when the concept, the art, and the structure underlying them get along well; when they seem to belong to each other. And unfortunately for “Penny Dora”, its component parts seem to come from different kits.
Final Verdict: 6.8 – A fun all-ages concept tripped up by a muddled execution.
