Critically-Acclaimed Graphic Novel ‘Incognegro’ Returns, Addresses Colorism In the Black Experience

Writer: Mat Johnson / Artist: Warren Pleece / Dark Horse Comics Ten years after the critically-acclaimed release of Incognegro in 2008, writer Mat Johnson and artist Warren Pleece return to their original characters Zane Pinchback, a light-skinned Black man who used his white-passing skin tone to investigate lynchings, and his spirited friend Carl, who has a lower calling but higher fun. Incognegro: Renaissance is a 5-part series that serves as a prequel to the story of Zane’s deadly southern adventure of Klansmen, segregation, and public lynchings, bringing us instead to Harlem. This mecca of the Black renaissance was seen briefly in 2008’s Incognegro, but it begged for a story all its own. Indeed, Zane and Carl hold a dynamic deserving of both worlds: the white-controlled and openly racist small southern town in Mississippi and the legendary Black home of growth and opportunity in Harlem, New York, where the original Incognegro graphic novel ended. In Incongnegro: Renaissance #1, we are teleported back to before Zane took the pen name Incognegro, before he went undercover to bring news of lynchings. In these earlier years Zane was hardly convinced of the responsibility he would later embrace; even further, he resented the idea of trying to pass as white at all. He was proud of his blackness, and took it as a sign of shame to ever pass as otherwise, even in service of something greater. Carl’s role is as we remember it — to challenge Zane’s thoughts (while getting under his…