Animal Man: The Death of the Red Mask

[alicemacher]

Warning for suicide.


From Animal Man #7 (Jan. 1989).



Animal Man is in Miami, helping with the aftermath of the alien coalition attack in Invasion #2. Speaking with a cop, he learns that the city is inundated with a rampage of crudely-built red robots. They don't do much but randomly colide with things and sometimes explode, and are easy to stop before they do too much damage. Nevertheless, Buddy decides to investigate their source and takes to the air.

He comes across a red-caped, red-helmeted man who's about to jump off a building, and stops him from doing so. The man asks him, "What makes you think I can't fly?", then admits he can't. He introduces himself to Buddy as the Red Mask and offers his hand before quickly jerking it away, saying he was joking: you don't shake hands with someone who has a "death touch." Then he bends over in a coughing fit.
















Animal Man dodges yet another red robot. The Red Mask says offhand this one's rocket-powered and rigged to explode shortly, so Buddy hurls it high into the air, where it blows up harmlessly. He asks the Red Mask why he's doing this, since he doesn't seem like a bad guy. The older man finds this darkly amusing ("I think you could be in the wrong business"), but admits that he'd have preferred to be a hero (again, through being able to fly) and join the Justice Society. He ponders his helmet and the "old, half-blind guy" who made it for him.







The Red Mask says okay, so Buddy asks him to wait while he makes the call, and flies off. However, the man soon coughs up blood again and says, "Ah, screw this!"













The epilogue shfits back to Buddy, who tips over the last of the red robots while thinking "If only I'd...". (It's not clear whether he ever found out the Red Mask died rather than simply got bored of waiting.) He says his goodbyes to the cop, who calls "Fly carefully, now!" after him. Animal Man scoffs at this... then flies right into the shockwave of the alien coalition's gene bomb (as covered in Invasion #3).

So. Nothing high-concept or intellectual this issue, just the tragic tale of a super-powered reluctant "bad guy" who'd only ever wanted to fly instead. Which makes the Red Mask one of several instances, within this series, of villains who in one way or another are not so villainous after all.

To be sure, Morrison's epic includes its share of "evil to the core" antagonists, such as Buddy and Ellen had faced in the "originally meant as a mini" opening arc. However, as tcampbell1000 has noted, already beginning with Issues 5 and 6, these are balanced with antagonists who are either not evil at all (the trucker) or don't really have their heart in the overarching evil plan they're part of (Rokara Soh). And there'll continue to be such a balance throughout. Indeed, the most compelling villains in this run are by far the not-thoroughly-evil ones. Even the eventually revealed true Big Bad of the entire run turns out to have a soft side. :-)

Oh, and Red Mask's partner, the Veil? He makes an appearance near the end of the run. What he has to say is brief but most unsettling.

Next up: return of the metafiction, and the first appearance of my favourite villain from this run: the (post-Crisis) Mirror Master.

Comments

[icon_uk]

"okay, last one of these for a while"

Yeah, but when the next big one's happen it's absolutely devastating.