Mat Johnson, Warren Pleece: Incognegro (2008, Vertigo)
Hardcover, 136 pages
English language
Published Feb. 6, 2008 by Vertigo.
Zane Pinchback is a reporter for a black newspaper in the early 1930s New York City. He has built his career investigating lynchings while undercover as a white person, as he is light-skinned enough to pass for white. He is about to retire, but then fate intervenes as his brother is charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi. Fearing that his brother will be lynched before given a chance to clear his name, Zane decides to go on one final investigation to free him, and brings along a friend who hopes to assume his job after he retires.
Graphic novel with a historical setting in the 1930s, a time of both lynchings and the Harlem renaissance. A journalist who can 'pass' as white travels the south to report on lynchings. The novel twists identity and perception.
