In ‘Coming Out Perfect,’ Richard Mercado draws up a lesser-known coming out story

Richard Mercado has been a comic lover for as long as he could remember. 

If he wasn’t nose-deep into a slice of life manga, he was probably making his way to a nearby comic convention in search of his next novel to flip through for hours on end, or better yet — making and selling art of his own, his style defined by his signature pops of color. 

Mercado would make frequent trips to the print shop in the UP Shopping Center, where he would print xerox copies of his own work to later sell at an indie convention. Later, he would go on to publish his own web comic, Uy! Si Crush! alongside illustrator-designer Gaby Taylo. The innocent love story hooked readers easily, and Mercado took it as a sign to keep going. 

KOMIKON. Richard Mercado sells some of his work at Komikon. All photos from Richard Mercado

The illustrator and comic artist couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment his interest in all this started. All he knew was that art and comics were in his life for as long as he could remember, and they were never going to go away. 

NEW ENVIRONMENT. Richard Mercado sells his art at a convention in the US.

It was serious business for Mercado. In 2018, he moved to the US to pursue an MFA in Comics, and just a few years later in 2022, went on to land a deal for his first-ever young adult graphic novel Coming Out Perfect — with acclaimed publishing house Scholastic’s Graphix, no less. 

“A lot of the core themes of the story are pretty much lifted off my own life. I focus a lot on making stories about the experiences of teenage Filipino gays, and that’s a lot of where my comics comes from, even when I was still in the Philippines,” he told Rappler. 

The cover of ‘Coming Out Perfect.’

“Even though it’s going to be published internationally, it was very important to me that this book was very Filipino. I was very specific with trying to root as much of my own experience as possible to make it as authentic as possible. Those are the things I really care about in general when I make comics.” 

More than being a milestone for Mercado, however, Coming Out Perfect is shaping up to be a book young queer Filipinos will want to watch out for. Here’s why. 

Secret third outcome

When queer Filipino kids come out to their parents, they mentally prepare themselves for two possible outcomes. 

There’s complete acceptance, which often comes with a supportive “We love you, anak.” And the other is outright rejection, which comes as a package deal with the rage-filled sermon about what people on the outside would think of their family if they found out. 

But what happens when there’s a secret third outcome you would have never seen coming — where your parents neither celebrate your coming out nor get angry about it? After the world stops for a moment when you make your big revelation, your parents act like nothing happened, and carry on doing whatever they were preoccupied with in that moment. 

That’s the exact predicament teenage boy Kevin from Coming Out Perfect finds himself in. Kevin drops a bomb on his parents over dinner by telling them he’s gay, and instead of one of the two extremes he was expecting, they completely ignore what he’s just blurted out. 

A page from ‘Coming Out Perfect.’

It’s a real-life occurrence that happens more than you would think. 

In Asian households, where family members tend to be non-confrontational and would rather avoid having difficult conversations, the queer child’s coming-out process isn’t always black and white. Sure, there are a few who were lucky enough to have been given the space to share how they really feel, but for many others out there, it becomes a canon experience for their attempts to showcase their true identities to fall on deaf ears at home. 

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But that’s where the gray area comes in. While their attempts to come out are downplayed, their parents still show that they love them nonetheless. 

“The way I came out to my parents was through a random outburst, but mine was in a car ride home. Sort of like in the book, my parents chose to ignore that I did that,” Mercado recounted his own experience. “Even though my family kind of chose to ignore it, they still love and care about me. It’s that complicated gray area that I’m tackling in this book.” 

Complexities of the queer experience

The complexity of the queer experience in the Philippines runs deeper than just that, and Mercado showcases this through the book’s other main character, Raymond — the school’s popular, openly gay kid — who Kevin can’t help but feel jealous of.

Raymond is perfect in Kevin’s eyes. He has tons of friends, and he embraces his own sexuality. After Kevin drunkenly confesses his jealousy to Raymond, he ends up taking him under his wing to “come out perfect.” But behind Raymond’s seemingly perfect life comes a hidden layer that Kevin wasn’t immediately privy to. 

Raymond and Kevin in ‘Coming Out Perfect.’

“With Raymond, I wanted to highlight another dimension of being gay in the Philippines. You know how Filipinos are very accepting of the LGBT community, but there is a bit of a caveat to acceptance, and sometimes acceptance feels more like tolerance?” Mercado explained.

Raymond represents the kind of gay individual that society tends to accept more, because he behaves a certain way, and his homosexuality supposedly does not clash with what is deemed “socially acceptable.” To maintain society’s positive perception of him, he finds himself bound to unspoken standards. 

“Growing up in the Philippines, there’s that mix of being Southeast Asian, being heavily rooted in religion, but at the same time, still having a loving community… With Raymond’s character, that’s what I tried to write — the limits we impose on gay people, where this is the only way they can present themselves so they’ll feel accepted with the majority of people,” Mercado added. 

Coming Out Perfect unpacks many of the nuances of growing up queer in the Philippines. 

More than anything, then, Mercado hopes that through this book, he can reach the people going through similar experiences. 

“I wanted to showcase that there aren’t binary coming out experiences. There are people who live in between the lines,” he said. “There’s no perfect way to come out. There’s no perfect way to be a gay person.” – Rappler.com

‘Coming Out Perfect’ is set for release on July 7 with Scholastic’s Graphix.