Broken Frontier

The popularity of books and movies like Twilight and television shows like True Blood are at fault for a lot of the bad “horror” and “dark fantasy” material circulating throughout the market, but it’s not fair to blame them for all of the woes of genre fiction. Because if the first issue of Alpha and Omega: Cry Wolf is any indication of what Patricia Briggs’ prose novels are like, I’ll definitely take a pass and shoulder her with some of the blame, too.

Granted, this comic book is the first I’ve ever heard of Briggs. A quick Wikipedia search reveals that she’s the author of a slew of fantasy novels, the most popular of which are the Mercy Thompson books. Werewolves and Native American shape-shifters are the focus of these stories, which led to a spin-off in the same fictional world called the Alpha and Omega series. Therefore, am I to assume that this comic book is somehow an adaptation of the novels? Let me put it like this: Dynamite as a company should have left Briggs to her own devices and spared itself the burden of printing costs.

But Dynamite did go to the trouble of publishing this comic, and now we have the story of Anna and Charles. They’re both werewolves with feelings. And, that’s about it. We see Anna and Charles in bed together (alas, no animalistic sex) while she has a nightmare. Charles wakes and comforts her. It’s a scene as flat and lifeless as the recycled melodrama found in any of the daytime soap operas (save the classic Dark Shadows, which not only pioneered this kind of storytelling, but pulled it off well). Then, Charles receives a telephone call from his father about a stray werewolf attack. Back and forth they go over the boring implications of it.

The second half of the book takes place at the funeral of a friendly neighborhood doctor turned werewolf. He couldn’t handle his monstrous transformation and ended his own existence. During the church service, a host of characters stand up to express their feelings about the dead doctor, all of which put me fast asleep in the pew. This is how the entire book carries on: long, shallow dialogue and frilly, predictable characters. It all has the charisma of a soggy dish towel.

I feel somewhat like a hypocrite; I sometimes enjoy melodrama (as I mentioned above, I’m a fan of Dark Shadows) and I think psychological ruminations about the nature of monsters is worthwhile reading. But from my experience, the only author to get it right is Anne Rice, who did so in the late eighties and early nineties. With Alpha and Omega, all of the material within its pages is one, long, boring retread of everything that’s been already done. It’s beyond formulaic. It’s plainly insipid. And while I appreciate the artwork of Jordan Gunderson and the colors of Mark McNabb, neither contribution lends a redeeming quality to the comic.

Simply put, Alpha and Omega: Cry Wolf #1 is a bad book nowhere near its cover price. If it took a chance in its narrative, I’d at least give it credit for doing that much. But it doesn’t; it simply plays it safe. There’s clearly a big problem when the most interesting character is a dead werewolf doctor that we never even meet.