Undercover Brother: 'Incognegro'

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IN THE GRAPHIC NOVEL "Incognegro," author Mat Johnson introduces Zane Pinchback, a reporter whose pale skin allows him to pass as white to expose racial injustice in the early 20th century American South.

After barely escaping his last attempt going "incognegro," Zane wants to call it quits but he's forced out on a final assignment to investigate the incarceration of his own brother, who is to be lynched for the murder of a white woman.

Johnson talked to Express about his second project with Vertigo — he worked on "Papa Midnite" with Tony Akins and Dan Green — and his first graphic novel, which was brought to life by illustrator Warren Pleece.

» EXPRESS: So is Zane a hero?
» JOHNSON: No. The person who'd be more of a hero to me would be the peasant, farmer guy who gives him a ride. He's actually risking something. Zane's going to leave; that guy has to stay.

» EXPRESS: What's it like having your imagery interpreted by someone else?
» JOHNSON: [Warren Pleece and I] are almost co-directors because he's deciding how actually to do what I kind of talk about. But he's also the cinematographer; he frames it up and he makes it look good. Still, if you try closing your eyes and describing what's there, you realize there's a variety of ways you can interpret a paragraph's worth of description.

» EXPRESS: How much research on the period did you do before beginning the book?
» JOHNSON: I've been researching the time period for the last 20 years. One of the things I teach is African-American literature of the Harlem Renaissance. So that period has permanent real estate in the back of my head. The reason I set it there was because it fit really well but also I just have a real affinity for the period. Not the lynchings but what was going on in the Harlem Renaissance time.

» EXPRESS: Why did you choose to tell this story with such a sensitive subject matter in a graphic novel format?
» JOHNSON: The prose that I write is literary fiction and that's usually about the language and more directly about the character. And it's not — even though I've had action in points in some of my books — it's not about a mystery noir thriller. Also, graphic work leads itself to telling a story that is interesting in a visual manner. The type of book that I did with "Incognegro" we probably wouldn't do with prose.

» EXPRESS: Why exactly?
» JOHNSON: With prose, I'm not a genre writer. It's not what I do. I'm not saying I'm too good for it. It's more like when I sit down and try it it's so bad that no one would want to read it. When I get to the page I'm thinking about language and I start thinking about larger issues. Literary fiction lets me really dive deep into the people and into their motivations. The fun thing about the graphic thing is it forces you to get moving and everything is action-based. Hopefully, what I'm bringing to it is still characters that are fully flushed out, a plot that will actually pull through, and a chance to not just have fun but to talk about larger issues.

Sometimes you just want to eat steak and sometimes you want to eat a hamburger. And there's good steak and bad steak and good hamburgers and bad hamburgers. So as a writer, it was exciting for me to make a really good hamburger for once and straight have fun. Of course, when you straight have fun, other things end up happening as well. Now I'm really happy with the book but doing the graphic stuff lets me flex different muscles. And hopefully it'll actually inform the other type of work that I do as well.

» EXPRESS: Was it difficult to define the line between the fiction of Zane's life and the reality of many African-Americans of the period?
» JOHNSON: The thing is all these people really did die and there was all of this injustice and to turn it into entertainment can be insensitive and morbid and everything else. But, that's why the piece has to have a larger social message because you can't just go and have popcorn and giggle and laugh at something like this. This is real suffering. Also it's not something we're completely distanced from. The sentences of these people are walking around today in my family and in other people's families. We're still affected by it. I think that's part of why you can't come to a piece like this without having a larger point that's going to have some benefit to society as well.

» EXPRESS: Do you think people are aware that this is such a recent part of American's history?
» JOHNSON: I had an interview yesterday and it was with a young, white man from the Midwest that was saying, "Well I guess your idea was to completely shock people because nobody's going to know that this even happened in the 20th century." And to be honest, I was shocked because in my personal mythology, and I think in the mythology of the African-American community, this is no secret. This is in the backs of our minds. It's part of how we react to things now. This is still a part of our consciousness. So what I'm hoping from this is that people who don't understand their own history will start to have a wider understanding of it. And they can use this as a catalyst to have a more nuanced worldview and possibly find out more about why they are in the place they are in [within] society.

» EXPRESS: Do you worry that some people will drown in the book's themes?
» JOHNSON: When I wrote this, I wasn't trying to just put out a social message. I wasn't thinking the next part of my political platform is I'm going to put out this because it's all going to help the Obama campaign. It's more like you have these things in your sub-conscience — my ethnic identity being bi-racial, being someone who's always been ethnically ambiguous and also my personal history of my own family dealing with episodes like this with the golden age of white supremacy — and it's good to get them out. It's good to deal with them.

Images courtesy Vertigo / DC