Class "R" Detective

Class "R" Detective is the second issue of Before the Incal. It's divided in five chapters. In this issue the character of Luz De Garra, John's main love interest is first introduced and the story-line of the case of the babies of the Red Ring starts to develop. It's also the first time we get glimpses of John's early chidlhood.

It was published in 1990 by Les Humanoïdes Associés. It was written by Alejandro Jodorowsky, illustrated by Zoran Janjetov.

Two is Better Than One
In one of City Shaft's streets, an urban clown named Wit-nit, is willing to tell jokes while setting himself on fire in exchange for money: if he makes the holo-viewers laugh his poor relatives will receive thirteen thousand kublars, but if he doesn’t make anyone laugh they will receive nothing. However, the act is interrupted when Deepo drops a bomb on a couple of cybo-cops gathered near the clown, blowing up them up. John uses the confusion to steal the body parts of the cybo-cops so that he can repair Koblos-5. He escapes through an airshaft, where he’s chased by robo-sentries, which he hits in the eye to destroy.

Koblos-5 trains John for months, with the objective of preparing him to be a class “R” detective, although John would prefer to be a class “A” thief. Aware of the fact that John's friends keep him tied to the criminal lifestyle, Koblos-5 attaches a lock of hair to John, which has a vibrating microphone that will let Koblos-5 listen in on John's conversations with his friends..

Truth is Pain
John’s gang is coming back from spending time with homeo-whores when they run into a Mega-mex war volunteers parade in avenue 345957, and a violent clash between volunteers and Psycho-anarchists takes place, when the Metabaron suddenly appears and squashes the warring factions, in what is his last day of active service. John’s gang quickly gets away from there. John and his friends are getting high and eating a vitasteak, when they learn through a holovid reportage that a very valuable statuette from the pre-techno-techno era (recovered by the volunteer army while pillaging Mega-mex) will be in on display in an exhibit in the Palace of Arts & Finances. Now that the Metabaron is retired and the police forces are still reorganizing they might have a chance to steal it.

The gang plans to smuggle a firework launcher inside the Palace, so that they can shoot them into the air and create a distraction while John steals the statue. If they get arrested, the cybo-cops will see that it’s just a harmless toy and realize they’re not thieves. They give John a hollow camera, so that he can hid the statue there, but when he pushes the red button to open the hollow camera fireworks come out, attracting attention to himself. John has been tricked by his friends, who manage to steal the statue in the confusion. John is being carried away by the cybo-cops, when suddenly the secret police appear and arrest John’s friends instead, while DiFool is congratulated for giving the tip about the robbery. John figures out that Koblos-5 arranged this. Indeed, Koblos-5 altered the pitch of his voice with the vocoder to tip off the cybo-cops as if he was John DiFool.

Koblos-5 explains to John that robots like him can actually accommodate human-like feelings, however the Techno-techno regime leaves no place for emotion since it violates their whole belief structure, so they put a self-destruct mechanism in all robots, which means that at the first sign of any feelings Koblos-5 could explode into a thousand pieces.

Don't Stir My Heart
Now that John has become a a pre-detective his first job consists on taking a particularly ugly aristo, miss Luz De Garra (daughter of the Prime Minister) to St. Prez, the hospital where they send everyone with the meropa virus. At the hospital Luz forces John and Deepo to urinate in the medication of the people who are sick, just for her amusement, and under the threat of making John lose his pre-detective license. Later Luz makes another demand, he wants a kiss from John. Upon kissing her it’s revealed that Luz was actually wearing holo-make up, and she’s actually a beautiful aristo girl.

On their way to Luz’s conapt, just when they’re about to enter the airtube, they get harassed by a bunch of kids and a muscular criminal, but Luz manages to kill him by throwing her halo, which functions as the aristo’s secret weapon.

Hate Will Rise
After Luz recommends John to become an official private detective, the cybo-cops inform him that before the final confirmation all applicants must carry out an official investigation on the subject that the applicant desires, and that an eye-cop will be sent to stay by his side and transmit the results to Police Central. To come up with a subject John looks back on his painful childhood: As a child he was secretly locked up and not allowed outside until he was seven years old, and, when he was finally let out, he and his parents had to pretend he was adopted. He realizes that he was never given any reason for this secrecy, and that despite all the years he spent in the club where her mother worked, he never saw any of the prostitutes having their own children. He proposes then proposes to investigate the mystery of the babies of the Red Ring. Meanwhile, at Police Central, cybo-cop XP-207 informs the Supra-divinoid that John has chosen a “taboo” subject. The Supra-divinoid is angered and afraid that secrets regarding that subject will be revealed, so he destroys XP-207 to eliminate witnesses.

In the city, John goes back to his childhood neighborhood and remembers how Sofiah, one of the shellbacks captured as slaves on Mega-mex, used to take care of him as a child. However, when he arrives at her conapt a Techno Combat Robot suddenly destroys the place, killing DiFool’s principal witness, nevertheless, he decides to stay on the case.

John decides to go back to the Daredevil Club to obtain more information about the case, but when he start interrogating the prostitutes about the absence of children the women get angry, and he gets thrown out of the club by Kaganu, the bodyguard.

The Hope of the Wicked
While Koblos-5 is busy bathing Deepo, John decides to continue his investigation by spying the flat of several prostitutes (XB-34 the Beautiful, the Whale of Aldebarn, Hot Connie, the Technodominatrix, Sex Kitten and Kia-loh the Ebony Goddess), hoping that he might find some clues. Suddenly, John sees a Techno-techno craft arriving to take Sex Kitten, who’s about to give birth. John wants to tail them in his moto-vette but a Techno Combat Robot appears again attacking him. The constant attacks against his investigation make DiFool start to suspect that his partner eye-cop might be snitching on him. After Sex Kitten comes out of the craft without the baby, she interrogates her, but she gets killed by Eye-cop before she can talk. At that point it becomes clear that Police Central had momentarily took control of Eye-cop's circuits, an illegal procedure aimed at interfering with the investigation. To secure that Police Central is not spying on him anymore, John smashes the eye-camera with Eye-cop’s permission. As a result of John's on-going investigation the Supra-divinoid becomes worried the he and his conspirators (him, the Techno-pope, the Prezident, and the Prime Minister) might be on the verge of a scandal, in fact, the eye-cop could communicate with the millions of other eye-cops and expose their secret. The Techno-pope point outs that the Prezident was recently cloned into an amphibious octopus from Betelgama, which further angers the Supra-divinoid. He orders the Prezident to be transferred to the body of professor Nump of Satellite University. Once the Prezident is transferred, he decides to use Luz De Garra's relationship with John to get at the young pre-detective.

Koblos-5 is afraid that thousands of cybo-cops, robo-marauders and executioners scouts will soon be on his tail, and that they will need some defense, so he has acquired a multicogan for defense. They also find a new hideout, a place where Koblos-5 used to spy the Blue Monads long ago. Suddenly, John receives a call in his mini-viewphone. It’s Luz, telling him that his father, has pardoned him and that he should come to her conapt, DiFool agrees.

Other issues

 * 1) Farewell, Father (1988)
 * 2) Class "R" Detective (1990)
 * 3) Croot (1991)
 * 4) Psycho Anarchist (1992)
 * 5) Vhisky, SPV and Homeo-Whores (1993)
 * 6) Suicide Alley (1995)