Piperka

After a rough childhood, raised by neglectful cat hoarders, Amy Sturgess yearns for a conventional life: success in her career and, if all goes well, some friends for a change. But she's hampered by anxiety, shaky self-esteem ... and the fact that she's a superhero, endowed with superhuman powers picked up via her mom, a former chemical plant employee.

The demands of her career as crime-fighting Starling make the challenges of her everyday life as a junior marketing executive all the more difficult: she's forever having to ditch important meetings to deal with superhero emergencies (she's taken to feigning a bad case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome to explain her abrupt disappearances). Meanwhile the pressures of her regular life are mounting: a workplace nemesis is stealing her accounts, her younger brother is in serious trouble, and she's become inappropriately obsessed with her almost-boyfriend from college, who's happily dating someone else.

Described as Jane Austen-esque by Library Journal and "hilarious and uplifting" by Shelf Awareness, Starling is, in the words of UK Comics Review, "A winning story about overcoming adversity, finding oneself and even having a shot at achieving true love, all lovingly ladled out in a savvy, self-deprecating, droll, artfully humorous manner."