by Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (art), and Val Staples (colors)
The Story: Ava Destruction and Zack Overkill go to ground before Zack discovers the awful truth about his origins.
What’s Good: Everything you’ve liked about Incognito returns for another month. Sean Phillips’ art is a key example of this; completely consistent in its style, tone, and quality without any dips or hurry. It continues to capture Brubaker’s weird mix of dark, hard-boiled noir and bizarre, ray-gun toting 60s sci-fi. Incognito has been nothing short of excellent every issue, and #5 is no different.
I said it in my review last month and I’ll say it again now: I really, really like Ava Destruction as a character. Once again, despite her clear mental imbalances and homicidal tendencies, she remains impossibly likable. In that sense, the reader’s own relationship to her mirrors Zack’s. She’s dangerous, bloody, and generally awful. Yet relentlessly attractive and compelling. It’s her very strangeness and ruthless and carefree violence that pull us towards her. And when Brubaker adds a level of vulnerability to her this month, it only makes us embrace her all the harder.
The twist regarding Zack’s origin occupies a central place in this month’s issue, and while it conveys, thanks in no small part to Phillips’ art and Staples’ neon colors and that throwback grindhouse/sci-fi feel, it also truly is a culmination of Zack’s existential struggles. In fact, Zack’s discovery and the subsequent conclusion of this issue are both beautiful in their being a concrete yet almost surreal manifestation of Zack’s loss of identity. Indeed, it fits the title “Incognito” perfectly. Despite its reliance on strong interior monologues, this series once again serves to question the nature of identity and whether the concept carries any validity at all. At the end of this issue, I’m leaning towards “no,” and yet paradoxically, I still see Zack as a distinct person that I’m invested in. This is testament to Brubaker’s skill as a writer that avoids clear answers.
Simply put, this is a highly intelligent issue that takes the book’s themes to an extreme new level, setting up a bloodbath finale that is sure to define what it is to be “Incognito.”
What’s Not-so-Good: The short pair of scenes with Zoe Zeppelin didn’t feel particularly integral, especially given how awesome the rest of the book was. They’re clearly there as to explain the S.O.S’s presence in next month’s battle royale, but I can’t see why they couldn’t have been shortened, or combined into one scene. Then again, I’m biased as I really just want more Ava.
Conclusion: As I said last month, Incognito is a book that has given one of the best writers in comics today the freedom to do what he does best. This is a writer in his prime, without constraints, making his ideal comic book. Bottom-line? Buy the book, buy the trade, just read it!
Grade: A
-Alex Evans
Filed under: Marvel Comics, Reviews | Tagged: Ava Destruction, Black Death, Comic Book Review, Comic Book Reviews, Criminal, Doc Lester, Ed Brubaker, Icon, Icon Comics, Incognito, Incognito #5, Marvel Comics, noir, pulp, pulp fiction, Sean Phillips, Weekly Comic Book Review, Zack Overkill | Leave a comment »
Weekly Comic Book Review 