Mercy Thompson: Homecoming
Written by Patricia Briggs and David Lawrence
Illustrated by Francis Tsai and Amelia Woo
Published by Del Rey
Based on Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson novels, Homecoming is a collection of Dabel Brothers’ four-issue prequel to Briggs’ first book. Without having read Briggs’ prose, I can only treat this book as a stand-alone narrative, without any insight into the affectionate nods to the character’s core story or insights gained to her motivations.
That said, there’s little in Homecoming to make me want to seek out Briggs’ novels to learn more. A fairly standard modern fantasy, with its requisite sardonic heroine of limited supernatural power but plenty of chutzpah, Homecoming feels like it’s just going through the motions. Our heroine, Mercy, arrives in the Twin Cities, encounters some mysterious beings who alternately take a dark interest in her and pursue a vaguely antagonistic agenda, finds some unlikely allies, and plays the villains in the end.
Thematically, there’s simply nothing here. It’s pure plot, a mystery driven by secondary characters surrounding Mercy. Much of the book’s failure stems from Lawrence’s (and Briggs’? the writing breakdown isn’t very clear, but it seems the Briggs operated in a more supervisory capacity, if the interview in the back of the book can be trusted) inability to infuse the secondary characters with any compelling motivations or subtleties. They’re bad, thus Mercy needs to thwart them. Her allies are predictably surly, as she is, but they develop an inevitable grudging respect.
The closest we come to any sort of quietitude or character bits is a clumsily paced and terribly drawn scene in which Mercy attempts to establish some semblance of a normal life, which apparently involves spending an entire page on her expositioned meeting with an old hardigan with a Puritanical fear of tattoos. Not necessarily an impossible scenario, but one delivered with poorly posed figures and not even a sliver of warmth or humanity.
Francis Tsai handles art for the first two chapters of the book, with Amelia Woo taking over for the last half. Both provide fully painted pages, and they show considerable potential. Which isn’t the same as delivering excellent pages, but the art would not be distracting if the story delivered on any level at all. Tsai’s delivers very strong work in the area of mood and shadows, and some very nice panel compositions. His page layouts, like the figure work, are rigidly stiff, however. By comparison, Woo’s pages are softer, with less oppressive coloring that lets the characters pop off the page and – occasionally – allows hints of nuance in the faces and postures. Alas, the layouts are overly posed, often excessively so, and “overacting” abounds.
All of which is 400+ words that can be easily summed up as this: Avoid Mercy Thompson: Homecoming.
