20th Century Fox clearly doesn’t just want to rely on Marvel’s regular stock of super-human characters to supply its endless need for graphic novel adaptations. The studio has picked up the right to Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ comic book tome **Incognito **from its Icon Comics imprint.
In an intriguing tweak of the genre, Incognito follows Zak Overkill, a villain blessed with uncanny strength, who nonetheless screws up and gets caught. In order to save his own skin, he rats on his even more dangerous boss, The Black Death, and is sent undercover in the Witness Protection programme.
But while he’s given a regular job delivering the post, and a drug he’s ordered to take dulls his powers, he soon discovers a loophole. Swearing to put his strength to good use, he becomes a vigilante, which only raises the ire of his former employer.
“He’s not your typical villain and I was trying to blend the trappings of pulp, comic and noir genres,” Brubaker tells Deadline “We’ve all seen the story of a good person who goes undercover and gets corrupted. This is a bad person forced to live among regular people, and how he’s affected by that. He once ran around with a mask, but now he’s got the fake name and the fake job. My goal was to have you rooting for him as he grows a conscience.”
The studio clearly has high hopes for what sounds a little more cutting and cynical than your average tale of heroic trouble, and while there’s no director or cast attached yet, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan will try his had at the first raft of the script.