Mary Pain

Mary Pain's hit rock bottom with nothing left to lose ... but she's also absolutely free.

Mary Pain might just be the patron saint of second chances. Unemployed and all out of options, she buys a one-way bus ticket to the dead-end town she grew up in. Time stands still there--all the same people still telling the same old gossip she's been running from for ages. Back in her childhood home, she needs to find a way to save the house from foreclosure, care for her ailing grandfather, and make peace with her mother's ghost, whose telephone calls still come in on the old kitchen landline.

With the odds stacked against her, Mary Pain doesn't let her mid-life rut keep her down: She picks up men for midnight trysts in the park, and remains open to deepening connections with childhood friends, new lovers, and precocious altar boys.

Lola Lorente's slick black inkwork feels sophisticated and voluptuous, and her rendering of townsfolk and their customs is a sensorial delight. Her devoted attention to fabric textures, body shapes, and one-of-a-kind faces brings this cast of oddballs and weirdos, sometimes verging on the grotesque, fully to life.

Translated from the Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg, Lorente's English debut is a sorrowful yet hopeful portrait of a young adult at a crossroads in life--a quintessential loser looking for meaning and redemption in a town full of ghosts.

Author: Lola Lorente
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Published: 05/12/2026
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.87lbs
Size: 10.02h x 7.61w x 0.89d
ISBN: 9781770468535

About the Author
Lola Lorente (1980) was born in Bigastro, a small town in southeastern Spain. Her trajectory has been shaped by winning competitions and scholarships, working on graphic novels, moving cities, creating occasional illustrations for print media, and a long list of part-time jobs. Her first book, Sangre de mi sangre, won her the prize for best new author at the Barcelona International Comic Fair. The French edition of this book was nominated for several categories at the 2024 Angoulême Festival. She currently lives in Madrid, where she spends her time creating comics and teaching drawing in public art schools. When she's not drawing, she likes to knit weird sweaters.