Like the last volume, this one seems to exaggerate the things I like least about the XIII series while ditching the things I like most (the art and the French, though that’s a function of my reading a translation.

Jones is an interesting character and the authors contextualize her childhood in interesting ways, but there’s something off-putting about (presumably) white French people trying to tell the story of the U.S. black civil rights movement and throwing racial slurs in there for good measure.

While less annoying than that, this volume also turns up to 11 the weird alternate history of XIII and the implausible interconnectedness of all the characters. Making Jones the illegitimate daughter of the universe’s equivalent to Martin Luther King Jr. feels as unnecessary as having an in-universe equivalent who is clearly a mashup of King and Malcolm X rather than just using historical figures.

• XIII
• The Mongoose
• Yann
• Éric Henninot