By: Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (art & letters) & Val Staples (colors)
The Story: The plots that Zack Overkill has involved himself in come to a climax as he finally comes face to face with Simon Slaughter. Is he going to stay true to being a good agent, so slip back into his former criminal ways?
What’s Good: Even though Incognito is technically a superhero genre title, you could very easily transplant most of the tropes of this Bad Influences story arc right into a crime or espionage story. The only thing that wouldn’t transfer very well is Zack’s ability to go back undercover with the bad guys. As I think I’ve mentioned in earlier reviews of this story, that aspect is something that wouldn’t work in a crime story because the mafia types would NEVER accept one of their former gangster buddies who had turned state’s evidence back into their circles. They’d just put a couple bullets into the dude to be safe. But, it works in Bad Influences because Zack Overkill does have superpowers and his powers are a little higher level than most of the bad dudes…so they have to accept him (because they’re afraid of him).
Of course, that plot element has mostly played out by this fifth issues, but it is worth pointing out because it illustrates why Incognito isn’t just “Criminal or Sleeper with superpowers”. The presence of superpowers allows Brubaker to write a different story than he could with mobsters and cops.
This issue brings everything to a climax that is pretty satisfying… Zack finally confronts Simon Slaughter, the good guy agent who was sent undercover and went rogue. The confrontation has a good bit of action, but the best part is Slaughter’s monologue about the nature of being a forgotten double agent: When your side forgets you’re there and leaves you “in” for too long, you start to lose track of what is right and wrong. But, Slaughter also starts to tease at some secret plots going on at a much bigger level than anything we’ve seen in Incogito before. Surely those things are going to be explored in a future story arc that will start with Zack in a pretty bad place. I’m looking forward to it.
The Phillips/Staples art team is again on their “A” game for this issue. Phillips is one of my absolute favorite artists because of the gritty realism he brings to his panels. Nothing he does is too dramatic, but he really executes on the little things like a person’s five o’clock shadow. Staples is just one of the best colorists working in comics right now (wish he did more books) and he is notable for the things he doesn’t do. He uses a lot of flat colors instead of rendering the hell out of everything and the panels are well served for it. Plus, he digs deeply into the color palate to find the colors that work best and we get all kinds of oranges, greens and pinks. It’s really good, tasteful stuff.
What’s Not So Good: Blame it on reader error if you want, but I never really grasped the sub-plot in Bad Influences about who was running around in the Lazarus robe. This was clearly an important element of the story and I completely missed it. Probably something happened like I was sleepy while reading issue #2 and missed some key point, but Brubaker could have given me a pick-up somewhere in a later issue so that I didn’t feel left out every time that plot swirled back into the room.
Other than that, I really have no complaints.
Conclusion: A nice ending to a strong Incognito story. It nicely sets up the next story and I’ll be looking forward to seeing that in a year or so.
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
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