BATMAN #386

[superfangirl1]

Comments

[thehefner]

Thank you so much!

I'm actually going to post the rest of this story sometime. In the past couple of days, I finally started reading Moench's original Black Mask stories, and was struck by three things:

1.) How much of an inferior ripoff Tommy Elliot was of Roman Sionis

2.) The fact that Moench clearly had a huge crush on his own creation, to the point that he even wrote Mask's WHO'S WHO entry, less like a bio and more like a little story!

and 3.) How the more popular and well-known skull-faced Black Mask bears absolutely zero resemblance to Moench's original character.

This is initially the fault of Ed Brubaker and Cameron Stewart in Catwoman (Brubaker always stunk when it came to writing the Bat-villains, and Stewart inexplicably changed the Mask to the skull look), who did away with the few elements that made Roman a potentially great character, reducing him to a generic sadistic gang lord with no ethos or motivation other than power and violence. Subsequently, this wrong version was the one subsequently embraced for War Games, Under the Hood, and everything else, to the point where there are even Black Mask fans. It's mind-boggling.

[freezer]

...who did away with the few elements that made Roman a potentially great character, reducing him to a blatant Jigsaw ripoff in a painted Red Skull mask.

FTFY!

[thehefner]

I feel old and out of touch for having had to actually google what that acronym meant. :)

From what I can tell, Jigsaw is only somewhat more creative, and at least had some kind of half-baked philosophy behind his torture. He's still a horrible character to use as some kind of basis, and yet so many writers do that anyway when it comes to the Bat-Rogues. Case in point: Joker's Asylum: Two-Face.

What I'm saying is, this version of Black Mask is actually worse than Jigsaw: a lousy, tasteless, pointless character whose very design loses the original's distinctiveness in favor of a gangland Johann Schmidt.

Seriously, why a skull? How did he go from his mask to the skull? Since the mask is now his own face, was the skull meant to be his own face? NONE OF THIS IS ADDRESSED BECAUSE NO ONE ACTUALLY THOUGHT TO TREAT HIM AS AN ACTUAL CHARACTER HIS HISTORY HECK NO WHY WOULD THEY.

This really wouldn't annoy me this much if DC hadn't inexplicably tried to make him such a big deal over the past eight years.

[icon_uk]

Agreed, the more recent Black Mask was just the Red Skull combined with the Joker's gleeful sadism, and the permanent skull grin just helped emphasise the latter every time he appeared.

It's also weird that for years previously the False Face Society was seen many times (in Gotham and Bludhaven), but never really featured Black Mask himself.

[thehefner]

The False Face Society is honestly the richest aspect of the original Black Mask concept, deftly blurring the line between henchmen and cult members, which was crossed only into full-blown cult-mode for No Man's Land (which worked). Really, even with Sionis dead, small cells of False Facers should still be own there, a handful of true believers ready to carry on their dead boss' beliefs in the power of masks.

The idea that Sionis would suddenly just abandon the society in favor of regular henchmen just makes me feel like Brubaker and everyone else onward seemed to entirely miss the point of the character.

[sadoeuphemist]

I think it's fairly interesting that considering his original gimmick, Black Mask has now become this blank slate of a character. All he needs is the, well, black mask, and then you can impose any identity you like on him. Across different media, he went from mask-obsessed lunatic, to psychopathic torturer, to mysterious technological mastermind, to bad-tempered crimelord, to mad science drug cultist.

[jaybee3]

Would have been interesting if Loeb had made Hush Roman (who is a kind of ALT-Bruce) instead of a new character with a history connected to Bruce who we had never heard of before. The character might have worked better.

[badficwriter]

This is a far more interesting character, but I suspect it wouldn't be popular.

[fairprincess]

Wait... what kind of animal is that at the beginning? Is it a fox? A cat?

This was great, thanks for posting! Janus, Roman, Circe, great stuff!

[psychopathicus_rex]

It might be a raccoon - the coloring's a little off, but otherwise, it's a pretty good match.