Advance Review: Mirka Andolfo’s Western Gothic Lacks That First Issue Bite In ‘Mercy’ #1

Woodsburgh, quiet little mining town ripped apart by a series of brutal murders. Which is when the angelic Lady Hellaine wanders into town, porcelain skin dashed with a splash of blood-red. Mercy is nowhere to be found in this new gothic Western tale…
And with that one paragraph, I’ve just summarised the entirety of Mercy #1. It’s one of those first issues that take way too long to establish mood and tone, forgetting that a big part of nailing the landing for the first issue is giving the reader enough of the story to make them feverishly expectant for the rest of the story.
Yes, other things happen, perhaps most importantly the first few pages, where we learn a little of how Woodsburgh’s Lady Swanson became a widow, her husband in her arms, decapitated, deep in the mine, monstrous forms attacking and only held off by a huge explosion.

But after that, for the rest of the 28 story pages in Mercy, we jump forward, jump around the cast, primarily working around both Lady Swanson, in town, and Hellaine, getting to town, neither of whom are the angels they’re often seen as.
Lady Swanson gets to bury her husband, but the lady is hardly whiter than white, with her hands in the local brothel and making good use of a couple of brutal enforcers, whilst Lady Hellaine is coming into town shy one wagon driver and with the afore-mentioned dash of blood…

Yes, there are other folks involved, primarily young Rory dreaming of her angelic mother, long-gone (perhaps… although Mercy is hardly one to go for the subtle with those sort of mysteries). Trapped in a Dickensian workhouse working the cotton, bound to play a far greater part in issues to come. And sure, there are others, ancillary characters, but they’re all painted in the same broad strokes as the leads.
The Image Comics PR describes Mercy as ‘a sensual Victorian gothic horror about otherness, damnation, redemption, and what it means to be a monster in a horror tale.‘
And you can see what they mean in Mirka Andolfo’s artwork, that has that Westernised-Manga style, a sultry look to the women, that whole Penny Dreadful gothic style. At times it looks really impressive, at others it’s just the wrong style to pull this off, too bright, too clean for a time where you know there’s muck, dust, and crap all over everything and everyone, no matter how rich or powerful they may be.

But the biggest problem with this first issue of Mercy is that there simply isn’t enough of anything to either really hook me in or make much of a judgment about what’s going on. It’s a sketch of a first issue rather than something fully formed. And yes, I appreciate that there are ways to slowly introduce things through your narrative, deliver a slow-burn to things, but there has to be that subtle balance between trying to do that slow-burn to keep things mysterious and delivering enough meat in the first issue to hook a reader and keep them wanting more.
I can’t exactly tell you which direction this series is going, although based on the ideas thrown around here, I reckon it’s demonic Lady Hellaine against Lady Swanson, as Hellaine comes back to reclaim some aspect that Swanson’s already battled in the mines. And then there’s going to be a familial link of some kind with Rory. But the biggest issue with Mercy, although I can speculate, there’s just not enough of me wanting to delve more into it. Again, it’s a classic example of a talented artist, who can certainly get some nice imagery and ideas going, not giving the reader enough to hold the attention. Or at least, not this reader.

Mercy #1  writer, artist & colorist by Mirka Andolfo. Color assistant Gianluca Papi, lettering by Fabio Amelia.
Published by Image Comics on 4th March 2020