Mat Johnson

"Warren Duffy has returned to America for all the worst reasons: his marriage to a beautiful Welsh woman has come apart; his comic shop in Cardiff has failed; and his Irish-American father has died, bequeathing to Warren his last possession, a roofless, half-renovated mansion in the heart of black Philadelphia. On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures in the grass outside; when he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of a different kind: in the face of the teenage girl he meets at a comics convention he sees the mingled features of his white father and his black mother, both now dead. The girl is his daughter and she thinks she's white. Warren sets off to remake his life with a reluctant daughter he never knew and a haunted house and history he knows too well. In their search for a new life they struggle with an unwanted house and its ghosts, fall in with a utopian mixed-race cult, and inspire a riot on Loving Day, the unsung holiday that celebrates interracial love"--Publisher.

Loving Day

A comic reimagining of America's racial history by a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award-winning writer follows a book collector's enslavement by giant Antarctic ice creatures after he learns that Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished novel is actually a true story.

A Novel

Invisible Things

Clem Robins

Warren Pleece

"The early 20th Century: an era when lynchings were commonplace throughout the American South. To most of the press, this epidemic of racial murder wan't even news. But a few courageous reporters from the North risked their lives to expose these atrocities. They were light-skinned African-American men who could 'pass' for white. They called this dangerous assignment 'going incognegro.' Zane Pinchback, a reporter for the New York-based New Holland Herald, barely escapes with his life after his latest 'incognegro' story goes bad. But when he returns to the sanctuary of Harlem, he's sent on a new story-- the arrest of his own brother, charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi" -- from dust jacket.

Incognegro

Simon Gane

"[S]et in the days after Hurricane Katrina... [t]wo small-time ex-cons with big dreams get the idea that this would be the perfect time to rob a bank. Catch is, the bank is in New Orleans, and they're on parole in Houston. Now, as every sane person triesto get out of The Big Easy, Emmit and Dabny will do whatever it takes to get in. As they journey through a tide of human suffering, Dabny wants to help, and Emmit sees only the money. But a rogue commander of the ruthless security force "Dark Rain" has his sights set on taking down the same bank. If Emmit and Dabny don't outrace him, their last hope for a second chance could be washed away in the floodwaters-- along with their lives" -- from publisher's web site.

A New Orleans Story

Dark Rain

This tenth anniversary edition of the acclaimed and fearless graphic novel features enhanced toned art, an afterword by Mat Johnson, character sketches, and other additional material. In the early 20th Century, when lynchings were commonplace throughout the American South, a few courageous reporters from the North risked their lives to expose these atrocities. They were African-American men who, due to their light skin color, could "pass" among the white folks. They called this dangerous assignment going "incognegro." Zane Pinchback, a reporter for the New York-based New Holland Herald, is sent to investigate the arrest of his own brother, charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi. With a lynch mob already swarming, Zane must stay "incognegro" long enough to uncover the truth behind the murder in order to save his brother -- and himself. Suspenseful, unsettling and relevant, Incognegro is a tense graphic novel of shifting identities, forbidden passions, and secrets that run far deeper than skin color.

Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery (New Edition)

Describes how the suspect testimony of Mary Burton, a young white indentured servant, spawned rumors of a conspiracy and a slave revolt and led to a deadly summer of persecution, violence, and murder that terrorized mid-eighteenth-century New York City. 15,000 first printing.

A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth-Century New York

The Great Negro Plot

Lester Baines hires three ex-cons to help him build his real-estate business in Harlem, a task that includes clearing the neighborhood of undesirable elements. By the author of Drop. Reprint. 15,000 first printing

Hunting in Harlem

A new voice in American fiction recalling the work of Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, Drop is an irreverent and unforgettable coming-of age-story about a 31-year-old black man who struggles to break out of the ghetto. Chris Jones has a gift for creating desire-no doubt a result of his own passion and desire to be anywhere but where he is, to be anyone but himself. He has a knack for creating effective ad campaigns. His work lands him a gig in London. Far away from his Philly roots, Chris is raking in the dough, has a Nigerian girlfriend, a beautiful apartment, and goes clubbing in the West End. He enjoys the role of the successful black American, living among the bourgeois Africans and West Indians of London. No longer afraid of what he calls the 'Pop pop pop' of gunfire so prevalent on the streets of his hometown, Chris is finally free. But life takes a turn for the worse, and Chris finds himself back where he started, forced back to Philadelphia where his only job prospect is answering phones at the electrical company, helping the poor pay their heating and lighting bills. Surrounded by his brethren, the down and out, indigent, the hopeless, Chris hits bottom. Only a stroke of inspiration and faith will get him back on his feet. Drop is a funny, moving and ultimately profound tale of a man determined to break the pattern of the ghetto he despises and who, in the process, is forced to come to terms with his hatred for himself.

Drop

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “[Mat Johnson’s] unrelenting examination of blackness, whiteness and everything in between is handled with ruthless candor and riotous humor.”—Los Angeles Times “Razor-sharp . . . Loving Day is that rare mélange: cerebral comedy with pathos.”—The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • San Francisco Chronicle • NPR • Men’s Journal • The Miami Herald • The Denver Post • Slate • The Kansas City Star • San Antonio Express-News • Time Out New York Warren Duffy has returned to America for all the worst reasons: His marriage to a beautiful Welsh woman has come apart; his comics shop in Cardiff has failed; and his Irish American father has died, bequeathing to Warren his last possession, a roofless, half-renovated mansion in the heart of black Philadelphia. On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures outside in the grass. When he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of a different kind: In the face of a teenage girl he meets at a comics convention he sees the mingled features of his white father and his black mother, both now dead. The girl, Tal, is his daughter, and she’s been raised to think she’s white. Spinning from these revelations, Warren sets off to remake his life with a reluctant daughter he’s never known, in a haunted house with a history he knows too well. In their search for a new life, he and Tal struggle with ghosts, fall in with a utopian mixed-race cult, and ignite a riot on Loving Day, the unsung holiday for interracial lovers. A frequently hilarious, surprisingly moving story about blacks and whites, fathers and daughters, the living and the dead, Loving Day celebrates the wonders of opposites bound in love. Praise for Loving Day “Incisive . . . razor-sharp . . . that rare mélange: cerebral comedy with pathos. The vitality of our narrator deserves much of the credit for that. He has the neurotic bawdiness of Philip Roth’s Alexander Portnoy; the keen, caustic eye of Bob Jones in Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go; the existential insight of Ellison’s Invisible Man.”—The New York Times Book Review “Exceptional . . . To say that Loving Day is a book about race is like saying Moby-Dick is a book about whales. . . . [Mat Johnson’s] unrelenting examination of blackness, whiteness and everything in between is handled with ruthless candor and riotous humor. . . . Even when the novel’s family strife and racial politics are at peak intensity, Johnson’s comic timing is impeccable.”—Los Angeles Times “Johnson, at his best, is a powerful comic observer [and] a gifted writer, always worth reading on the topics of race and privilege.’”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

A page-turning thriller of racial divide, Incognegro: Renaissance explores segregation, secrets and self-image as our race-bending protagonist penetrates a world where he feels stranger than ever before. When a black writer is found dead at a scandalous interracial party in 1920s' New York, Harlem's cub reporter Zane Pinchback is the only one determined to solve the murder. Zane must go "Incognegro" for the first time, using his light appearance to pass as a white man to find the true killer, in this prequel miniseries to the critically acclaimed Vertigo graphic novel, now available in a special new 10th Anniversary Edition. With a cryptic manuscript as his only clue, and a mysterious and beautiful woman as the murder's only witness, Zane finds himself on the hunt through the dark and dangerous streets of "roaring twenties" Harlem in search for justice. In a time when looks could kill . . . Zane's skin is the only thing keeping him alive.

Incognegro: Renaissance

Andrea Mutti

Just in time for the fall presidential election, Mat Johnson, acclaimed writer of INCOGNEGRO, delivers a race-against-time political thriller about a militia group that's plotting to assassinate the second African- American President of the U.S. In the w

Right State

Tony Akins

Dan Green

Written by Mat Johnson Art by Tony Akins & Dan Green Cover by Ronald Wimberly The King of Voodoo has a long history, but where did it all begin? The answer can be found in HELLBLAZER: PAPA MIDNITE, collecting the acclaimed 5-issue Vertigo miniseries that follows the story of the curse that made Midnite immortal, from its origin in 1712 through the failed slave rebellion of 1741 and into the present day, where he continues to pay the price for his original sin.

Papa Midnite

John Constantine, Hellblazer

“ Incognegro traz, de modo ousado, parte do contexto brutal dos EUA no início do século XX. Entre linchamentos públicos, cartões postais macabros, jornais e ativistas negros, ele revela toda uma miríade de cores, mas também de terríveis pesadelos, que muitos se recusam a olhar e lembrar.” - Marcelo D’Salete “Engenhoso, iluminador e poderoso” - Paul Theroux “Johnson é uma das mais importantes novas vozes na tradição afro-americana de literatura” - Walter Mosley No início do século XX, quando os linchamentos eram uma prática comum em todo o sul dos Estados Unidos, um grupo de repórteres corajosos arriscaram suas vidas para expor essas atrocidades. Eram homens afro-americanos que, pela cor de pele clara, conseguiam "passar despercebidos" entre os brancos, se infiltrando entre os principais grupos racistas. Eram os "incognegros". Publicado originalmente pela Vertigo, extinto selo de quadrinhos adultos da DC Comics, Incognegro se passa nos anos 1930, quando Zane Pinchback, um repórter de Nova York, é enviado para investigar a prisão de seu próprio irmão, acusado pelo brutal assassinato de uma mulher branca no Mississippi. Enfrentando uma multidão de fazendeiros segregacionistas e homens da Ku Klux Klan prontos para o ataque, Zane precisa permanecer "incognegro" por tempo suficiente para descobrir a verdade por trás deste crime, salvando não apenas seu irmão, mas a si mesmo. O roteirista Mat Johnson e o desenhista Warren Pleece criam um suspense sobre identidades metamorfas, paixões proibidas e segredos que vão muito além da cor da pele.

Written by Mat Johnson Art by Warren Pleece Photo cover "[An] engrossing graphic novel, with its smart dialogue and sharp images." - The New York Times Writer Mat Johnson, winner of the prestigious Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction, constructs a fearless graphic novel that is both a page-turning mystery and a disturbing exploration of race and self-image in America, masterfully illustrated with rich period detail by Warren Pleece (THE INVISIBLES, HELLBLAZER). In the early 20th century, when lynchings were commonplace throughout the American South, a few courageous reporters from the North risked their lives to expose these atrocities. They were African-American men who, due to their light skin color, could pass for white. They called this dangerous assignment going "incognegro." Zane Pinchback, a reporter for the New York-based New Holland Herald, is sent to investigate the arrest of his own brother, charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi. With a lynch mob already swarming, Zane must stay "incognegro" long enough to uncover the truth behind the murder in order to save his brother - and himself. Advance-solicited; on sale May 27 136 pg, B&W, - $14.99 US - MATURE READERS

A sharp allegorical novel about a hidden human civilization on a Jovian moon, a crucial election, and a mysterious invisible oppressor who must not be named, by one of our most imaginative comic novelists The Delany, captained by a swashbuckling capitalist named Bob, is circling Europa--one of the moons of Jupiter--studying its atmosphere, but inside, the ship is divided into two warring camps. First there are the group of "Bobs" who slavishly follow the ship's vain, ignorant captain and who antagonize the two crew members who've run afoul of the Bobs: Dwayne and Nelani, who are studying the surface of the moon itself. But it is Dwayne and Nelani who make the ship's one and only discovery--and it's a doozy: One of their drones returns pictures of what appears to be a normal American city enclosed in a dome with a crack in its roof. When the Delany crew steers their ship closer to investigate they find themselves pulled into the domed city: New Roanoke, a city made up of generations of UFO abductees from earth, whose society is a funhouse mirror of the United States. Nelani, Dwayne, and the Bobs find themselves in the middle of an election in New Roanoke--one that hinges on the question of whether or not its inhabitants should return to Earth. The planet's dome has been cracked and is likely to crumble, its residents are terrorized by "invisible things" that toy with them--slapping them, dragging their bodies around, and sometimes smashing their skulls--and their whole society is haunted by a central mystery: Why are they there? We follow Nelani through this mirror world of our own and into the same questions of polarized politics, existential crisis, and environmental omens that obsess and divide our own. Will New Roanoke survive? Will we?

The Invisible Things

"[S]et in the days after Hurricane Katrina... [t]wo small-time ex-cons with big dreams get the idea that this would be the perfect time to rob a bank. Catch is, the bank is in New Orleans, and they're on parole in Houston. Now, as every sane person tries to get out of The Big Easy, Emmit and Dabny will do whatever it takes to get in. As they journey through a tide of human suffering, Dabny wants to help, and Emmit sees only the money. But a rogue commander of the ruthless security force "Dark Rain" has his sights set on taking down the same bank. If Emmit and Dabny don't outrace him, their last hope for a second chance could be washed away in the floodwaters-- along with their lives" -- from publisher's web site.

Amazing Spider-Man

Peter Milligan

Jamie Delano

In this volume, England’s favorite low-rent mage skips town to avoid incarceration and heads to India. But Constantine’s quest for purity in an attempt to resurrect the love of his life is quickly interrupted when an expat friend gets him mired in a series of grisly murders. Then, Constantine reluctantly becomes embroiled with a group of anarcho-punks who worship a powerful effigy of Sid Vicious. Plus, discover the centuries-long history of the King of Voodoo, and original Hellblazer writer Jamie Delano returns to John Constantine, alongside superstar artist Jock! Collects Hellblazer #261-266, Hellblazer Special: Papa Midnite #1-5, and the Hellblazer: Pandemonium graphic novel.

Mat Johnson

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