This is the graphic novel which collects the first four comics in this series. I pre-ordered this one since I’ve been looking forward to it for a while.

Premise: This is a graphic novel prequel to the events in the Mercy Thompson books. It covers Mercy first arriving at the Tri-Cities, getting a job as a mechanic and meeting Zee, Stephan and others. In true Mercy form, she manages to find herself involved with trouble (starting by being attacked by a pack of rogue wolves), but stubbornly works through it in her own way.

My Thoughts: Wow, I’m seeing a lot of negative reviews on Amazon from people who thought this was a novel, not a graphic novel.  Yikes!  Perhaps they pre-ordered *very* early before the cover which says “an original graphic novel set in the best selling Mercy Thompson universe” was put up, and didn’t check Patricia Briggs’ website to see that the next Mercy Thompson novel is Silver Borne and is coming out Spring 2010. :  It’s a bit sad to see it getting a lot of negative reviews because of this.

Anyway, as a graphic novel, I liked that everything is in rich color (not always the case)!  I’ll probably be flipping the book open to stare at the artwork every so often this week. I’m enjoying having images of the characters to look at. It looks like the illustrators were changed halfway from Francis Tsai to Amelia Woo, so there were some subtle differences in how people were drawn, but I wasn’t completely thrown. I did feel that there was an uneven-ness in the way Mercy was drawn. First: she looked asian sometimes, white others, and native american rarely. Then in the first two comics Mercy looks similar to how she looks on the covers by Dan Dos Santos, but in the second two she has lighter hair and skin. I’m not sure why. It’s too bad Mercy looked so different when she’s the main character. Either way, I still liked the artwork, so that’s a minor complaint. I most liked how Adam was drawn by both illustrators. Zee looked the most like I imagined, but maybe more wiry and less stocky than I expected. Stephan looked the *least* like I expected (90’s grunge vamp? didn’t expect that one).

Story-wise, there is a lot of subtle back story hints which fans of the Mercy Thompson novels will like. How Mercy got her lamb necklace and her cat for example, but I do think this graphic novel is better when you have already read the Mercy Thompson books so you can pick up on these things. Bran doesn’t really show up in this book but there is a drawing of him in the extras at the end of the book (the other extra is an interview with Patricia Briggs about working on this GN).

Overall: A nice graphic novel prequel to the books. A must for die-hard Mercy Thompson fans, but if you don’t like graphic novels you may want to skip it. I personally like it a lot and am happy I bought it (*hugs it* but then I’m a big fan of this series). The only minor complaint I have is that the artwork had some inconsistencies and uneven-ness particularly in the way Mercy was drawn.

Amazon | B&N

The Dabel Brothers are also making the first Alpha and Omega story into comic book form: http://www.dabelbrothers.com/index.php?categoryid=16&p2_articleid=59