All wrapped up but not without pain.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mat Johnson
Art: Warren Pleece
Letterer: Clem Robins
What They Say:
The long fuse of Incognegro: Renaissance hits the bomb in this noir mysteries explosive conclusion. Zane Pinchback and his femme fatale Bette discover the story behind the murder that sent them on their quest, and now they must bring that truth to light without becoming its next victims.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The final installment of this Incognegro series draws things to a close with a number of answers but in a way that really makes me wish I was able to read it all in one sitting. Mat Johnson has woven a solid tale here and brings the right kind of closure to it for most of the cast, though there’s plenty still open to explore, while Warren Pleece again delivers a great looking book. I love the detail to the character designs and the settings, all of which feel even more striking in this black and white format. I’d be curious to see what it would feel like in full-color but this works really well for it.
Zane and Better are pretty much working completely together at this point after the ups and downs that they’ve been through and that’s definitely working well. The two have learned the truth of what’s going on but Zane knows they need more to really finalize it so that the cops will believe it since they wouldn’t care much otherwise about what happened to Xavier, especially over Van Horn’s status. The problem, of course, is trying to figure out exactly who all is orchestrating the threats to Bette, which is when a delightful meeting is put into play between them and Bette to give them the original manuscript Xavier wrote. What’s really fun is seeing how Bette helps Zane costume-up into an old man with all the tricks of it so that he can pull it off, making for a great switch when Van Horn’s editor, Gray, turns out to be behind it.
There’s a lot of little convolutions that play out once that meeting hits and we see how Gray doesn’t even think Van Horn realizes what happened and probably believes he wrote the book himself. There are conflicting pieces still as to who did what but the complicity is there and seeing it unfold, with Zane getting to push Van Horn into a bad place in order to really talk, results in the real story coming out. It’s always good to see justice served, especially for those that often seem to avoid it, and the way everything plays out may wrap it all up quickly but it delivers a good sense of finality about it for this story while allowing the main cast to move forward on their own paths.
In Summary:
A murder mystery plays out to completion and most everything is dealt with well here. Johnson and Pleece followed-up their original work with more material that expanded on it and gave us a really interesting look at this particular place and time and some of the stories that are very under the radar in general, which is why I love works like this. It’s a solid mystery with some great character material, good twists, and fantastic artwork. I suspect it’ll read a whole lot better in complete form but I’m glad I got to experience what these characters went through on a monthly basis.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: July 4th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
