Red Skull: Incarnate

Chapter 3 Review

s another depressing installment in this series that details the rise of Johann Schmidt from orphaned boy to power-hungry Nazi. Thus far, Greg Pak has done a solid job making Schmidt's transformation feel nature and not heavy-handed or overly melodramatic. However, issue #3 does resort to more exposition than I care to see to move Johann into the next phase of his troubled upbringing. This doesn't make Red Skull: Incarnate #3 a bad issue mind you, but it definitely dampens the dramatic impact of the last page reveal.

In issue #3, Johann runs into one of his old friends from the orphanage, Dieter. Greg Pak uses Dieter as a measuring mechanism to show how much Johann has changed since he ran away from his past life. Johann is now a man of action, who has also misplaced his moral compass due to the harsh living conditions he's been put through. His interactions with Dieter in this issue are proof of that, and this subplot's outcome winds up being quite tragic, as expected.

However, the final few pages of Red Skull: Incarnate #3 dive into exposition-heavy narration to drive the ship home. While I'm all for getting a history lesson out of an engaging comic, this particular example kind of kills the pacing of this issue dead. Greg Pak might have felt this approach necessary to sell the last page reveal, but a part of me believes Pak could have come up with something a little more creative to drive his point home.

Red Skull: Incarnate #3 might be the weakest link of this series thus far, but it's still a good comic. Outside Pak's exposition-heavy closing, the characterization remains strong and the art by Mirko Colak is still top notch.