The Mask (comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  A bald green head, swollen far beyond human size, grins with a mouthful of enormous teeth. This is Big Head, the creature at the center of The Mask, an American comedy horror comic series published by Dark Horse Comics. The face belongs to nobody in particular. It belongs to whoever happens to pick up an old jade mask that can talk. The series is known for its dark tone and graphic violence, and its pages are crowded with killers, crime bosses and a long list of unlucky wearers. Three questions run through what follows. Why does one object turn so many different people into monsters? How did a single drawing grow into years of miniseries and crossovers? And how did something this brutal end up with a kid-friendly spin-off line of its own?

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• 2. Inhibitions Removed

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  Stanley Ipkiss looks like a harmless nobody in the original comics, yet he carries intense, buried rage. He nurses grudges over trivial slights and daydreams about cruel revenge on the people behind them. The mask strips away every social and moral inhibition, and its wearer goes insane. Stanley becomes a sadistic, bloodthirsty being called Big Head. Others who put it on follow the same road. Whatever they meant to do, they end up as cruel antiheroes or vengeful, murderous villains.

  The creators borrowed from a crowded rogues' gallery. Big Head draws on the Joker, the Green Goblin, Freddy Krueger, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Steve Ditko's the Creeper. Inside the stories, the mask works as a semi-living entity that possesses whoever wears it. That makes it both hero and villain, depending entirely on the motives of the person underneath.

  The screen versions bend this rule. In the 1994 film and the animated series, the mask has less predictable effects. Film Stanley is polite, meek and nebbish, and becomes brash, charismatic and thieving while still being polite. He later turns into a superhero. The film's villain, Dorian Tyrell, keeps his basic personality and simply grows more violent. The 2005 sequel Son of the Mask follows the same pattern.

  Even the name carries a twist. In the earliest stories, the title referred to the object itself, and the character it unleashed was simply Big Head. Only the films and the television series made him The Mask.

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• 3. A Sketch Becomes a Series

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  The base concept of The Mask was created by Mike Richardson on the 5th of February 1982. It first appeared as a single sketch he drew in 1985 for APA-5, an amateur press publication run by writer Mark Verheiden. After founding Dark Horse Comics, Richardson pitched the idea to Mark Badger, a writer and artist who had worked at Marvel. The result was a strip called Masque, which ran in the early issues of Dark Horse Presents. Badger's strips grew more and more political, so Richardson ended the strip and returned to his original concept.

  Artist Chris Warner was then hired to rework the character from the APA-5 drawing, and he created its definitive look. That version launched in 1989 in Mayhem, a Dark Horse anthology. Aspiring writer John Arcudi and artist Doug Mahnke were brought in for new adventures. Their stories became the first popular use of the character, described as a combination of Tex Avery and The Terminator.

  Mayhem was canceled after four issues. In 1991, Arcudi and Mahnke carried on with a four-issue limited series called The Mask, which introduced a mute, brutish hulk named Walter. It was among Dark Horse's best sellers. The company followed it with a string of miniseries in which different heroes and villains wore the mask. That run ended in 2000 with Joker/Mask, a crossover with DC Comics.

  The Mayhem stories from issues one through four were gathered in 1991 as The Mask #0, and again in a trade paperback.

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• 4. The First Three Wearers

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  In an antiques shop, a weak, neurotic Stanley Ipkiss hunts for a present for his girlfriend, Kathy Matthews. He walks out with an old mask and, once he wears it, goes on a rampage against everyone he holds a grudge against. That earns him the nickname Big Head.

  When the mask comes off, Stan starts to understand what he has done, and it takes an emotional toll. He turns verbally abusive toward Kathy, and she throws him out. She keeps the mask, since it was his gift. Stan later breaks into her apartment to steal it back just as police arrive over an earlier housebreaking call. Cornered, he puts it on again and kills several officers while causing heavy property damage. He goes home and removes the mask, ready to leave the city. Kathy has worked out who Big Head is. She slips on the mask while his back is turned and shoots him dead.

  Kathy brings the mask to Lieutenant Kellaway for safekeeping. Kellaway is struggling with the Big Head murders and with crime lords loose in his city. He brushes off her warnings, assuming she is stressed, and tries it on. As Big Head, he sets out to destroy the bosses who have plagued his career.

  City residents know nothing about a magical mask. They assume the same killer is now targeting high-profile crime lords. Kellaway's intentions are good, but his methods grow steadily more violent. Then Big Head meets Walter, a giant mob enforcer who never speaks and has sworn vengeance for the deaths of his employers. Walter never shows pain, and he is the only one who can truly hurt Big Head.

  A police manhunt closes in on Kellaway. When his own partner tries to stop him, the mask-warped lieutenant nearly kills his friend. Horrified, Kellaway flees, buries the mask in cement in his basement and vows that no one will wear it again. The crime lords, however, are about to send men to his home.

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• 5. Passing Hands

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  The men sent to Kellaway's home reach him first. He heads for the basement to retrieve the mask but is wounded before he can put it on, and he falls into a coma. The attackers escape with the mask. One of them puts it on Nunzio, a wimpy driver, as a joke, and Nunzio becomes Big Head. He kills the thugs and every crime lord, and takes over as the city's top boss.

  Kathy sees that the return of Big Head means Kellaway failed to hide the mask, so she must stop him herself. She disguises herself, charms Big Head, tricks him into taking the mask off and shoots him as he dives for it. She then wears it to hunt the real boss, Don Mozzo, who had been away in Miami when Nunzio took his office. Mozzo turns to Walter for help. Kathy fights Walter, then surrenders and tosses him the mask, but he shows no interest in it. Kellaway, recovered from the hospital, drives his car into Walter and sends both Walter and the mask into the docks.

  Four friends named Rick, Ben, Hugo and Archie feel stuck in dead-end lives. Rick is a disgruntled anarchist, Ben is a failed musician, Hugo is a recovering drug addict and Archie is a teenage savant. Rick, fascinated by the Big Head murders, finds the mask by the city pier. Each of the four takes a turn wearing it to fix their lives, and each makes things worse. Walter, recovered from being hit by the car, ends up holding the mask. He cannot use it, and in frustration he hurls it far into the distance.

  This closed the original trilogy of The Mask, The Mask Returns and The Mask Strikes Back, published from 1991 to 1995. It was also the first story made after the film's success, so the violence eased and the comedy came forward.

  The mask kept turning up anyway. In The Hunt for Green October, a film buff named Ray Tuttle finds it. He holds a grudge against an entrepreneur whose faulty theme park ride killed his wife and left his daughter, Emily, mute. Kellaway and a group of terrorists chase him. The title parodies the novel The Hunt for Red October. In Southern Discomfort, a man named Eric Martin wears it in New Orleans, searching for his sister, who was kidnapped by voodoo gangsters. In Toys in the Attic, toy designer Aldo Krasker unknowingly goes on a murder spree against former high school classmates who mocked his acting. Doug Mahnke returned to draw the covers for that series.

  The revival, I Pledge Allegiance to the Mask!, acknowledges that the main series lay dormant for twenty years. The mask spent those two decades buried in concrete. Kellaway retired to California, and Kathy became mayor of Edge City. A struggling politician named Abner Mead digs it up. As Big Head, his uninhibited and sometimes violent outbursts make him oddly endearing to voters, and he runs for President of the United States.

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• 6. Crossovers and Detours

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  In Las Vegas, the hero Grifter, of the WildC.A.T.s, is sent to a gun show to break up a weapons smuggling ring. A tourist ends up with the mask, and Big Head starts a riot by pulling a knife. Grifter first mistakes the Mask for his target. Once the tourist's girlfriend is threatened, the two team up against the smugglers.

  The alien bounty hunter Lobo takes a very different job. He is hired to find the Ultimate Bastich, a being who has wiped out numerous planets. His search leads to Earth, where a petty thief has become Big Head. Their battle devastates Manhattan. Big Head then offers to help Lobo find the previous wearer, and the two tear through space together. Lobo wins the mask, wears it and does even more damage. A black hole throws him back in time by a month. He learns that he himself is the Ultimate Bastich. He tosses the mask back to where the thief found it, then breaks the time loop by turning his past self in for the reward.

  Marshal Law faces a nemesis built from a secret government experiment. A superhuman serial killer wears the mask, and the experiment goes disastrously wrong. The villain is immune to Marshal Law's usual ultra-violence and can warp reality to suit his psychotic whims.

  Stanley Ipkiss is watching The Dukes of Hazzard in The Mask: Virtual Surreality when a commercial pitches a home entertainment gadget from a Dr. Buzz Hedgaymes. Stanley puts on the mask and is whisked to the doctor's lab. The machine throws barbarians, superheroes, cartoons and demons at him, and he finds himself in his own childhood with a mother who turns aggressive. That is how he realizes something is wrong, because his real mother was never like that. Pretorius turns out to be Hedgaymes. Pretorius challenges him to rock-paper-scissors, cheats with giant scissors, and is beaten by a giant stone hand. The Mask then chooses another round of The Dukes of Hazzard before handing Pretorius to the police.

  In Angry Young Mask, an eleven-year-old boy named Ned resents his unfair parents. He finds the mask, causes plenty of mischief and then throws it in the backyard. By morning, his two-year-old brother, Josh, is wearing it.

  Other stories reach into the grave. In Night of the Return of the Living Ipkiss... Kinda, Kathy visits Stanley's grave, and he rises as a zombie Big Head. He kills Kellaway, Walter, Don Mozzo, Lionel, many police officers and a biker. Kathy tells him he no longer has the mask, and he crumbles to dust. Everyone he killed comes back to life. In Walter: Campaign of Terror, Big Head's arch-enemy, the indestructible mafia hitman, runs for mayor of Edge City.

  No Mask Is an Island is told on hill roads at night, when an anthropology professor recounts the mask's victims to a young museum collector. A depressed pilot finds it in a cargo area and crashes his aircraft into a mountain, killing the crew. A little girl on a nearby farm finds it at the crash site and uses it to murder her abusive father. A priest who takes it for safekeeping becomes a sex-crazed menace around the nuns, and the church's exorcism fails. The church hires the professor to trace its origins. He finds it is a thousand years old, made with African techniques yet decorated with Scandinavian motifs. Unable to explain it, the church plans to destroy it, until a museum offers a small fortune. The collector doubts the tale and packs the mask in a box for the trip to the city, presumably Gotham City.

  In Joker/Mask, the Joker finds the mask in a Gotham museum. He decides it is time to revive his criminal career and takes over Gotham television to broadcast his own shows. His sidekick Harley Quinn is replaced by two women called the Jokettes, and she runs to Poison Ivy, who kills the Jokettes and secretly tries to steal the mask. Kellaway travels to Gotham to help Batman and Commissioner Gordon. Batman notices the mask is not changing the Joker's mind. The Joker always showed his innermost desires, and the mask only makes him unstoppable. Batman tricks him into removing it by saying he is no longer funny and now relies on tired schtick and the mask instead of his own style. The Joker's original head emerges from his shoulder and argues with his mask-head before he takes it off. The Joker, Harley and Ivy are arrested, and he still manages to patch things up with Harley. Batman agrees to give the mask to Kellaway, who digs up Stanley Ipkiss's grave and buries the mask with the corpse.

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• 7. Hollywood Takes the Mask

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  The Mask reached United States theaters on the 29th of July 1994, with Jim Carrey in the title role. Chuck Russell directed. Peter Greene played Dorian Tyrell, and Peter Riegert played Lieutenant Mitch Kellaway. Orestes Matacena played Niko, Richard Jeni played Charlie Schumacher, and Amy Yasbeck played Peggy Brandt. Cameron Diaz made her screen debut as Tina Carlyle, and Ben Stein had a cameo as Dr. Arthur Neuman.

  The film nearly went another way. Some people at New Line Cinema saw an early chance to replace their fading A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise with a horror picture. The studio struggled to write a script with violence that was funny, and it had more success with a comedy that happened to contain violence. Mike Richardson and Russell kept pushing for that second approach, and it won. Executive producer Michael De Luca suggested Jim Carrey, and the screenplay's "Cuban Pete" production number locked in the final tone. The plot was loosely based on the first half of the Arcudi and Mahnke miniseries. A Super NES video game followed in 1995.

  The Mask: Official Movie Adaptation, a two-issue comic, retold the film and added scenes usually seen only as video extras, such as the death of Peggy Brandt. It also included moments never filmed. In one, the thugs Stanley repays with his balloon animal routine have stolen his watch. Some dialogue was changed.

  The Mask: Animated Series ran from 1995 to 1997, with Rob Paulsen voicing Stanley Ipkiss. John Arcudi wrote two episodes. One was "How Much is That Dog in the Tin Can" in season one. The other was "The Goofalotatots" in season three, a parody of Animaniacs, in which Paulsen also starred. The cartoon changed the film's setup. Tina was gone, and reporter Peggy Brandt became the main female character without being a love interest. Ipkiss could use the mask in daylight as well as at night, and he kept his own mind while gaining the Mask's mischievous, heroic personality. The series even crossed over with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, another cartoon based on a Jim Carrey film.

  Four VHS volumes were released, plus two extra in Australia, and all are now out of print. When Son of the Mask first came out on DVD, Wal-Mart sold an exclusive two-pack pairing it with the cartoon's pilot, "The Mask Is Always Greener on the Other Side" in two parts.

  Dark Horse then published Adventures of the Mask, a comic that followed the cartoon's continuity. It blended the original adult comics with the movie. Its Mask wore the trademark yellow suit and hat and was goofy, good-hearted and heroic. Walter was back as the henchman of Pretorius, and Kellaway resembled his comic-book self more than the film's version.

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• 8. Afterlives and Collections

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  Director Chuck Russell said in his 1996 LaserDisc commentary that he wanted a sequel. He had cut the scenes of Peggy's death to leave her alive for a second film, hoping Carrey and Amy Yasbeck would return. Carrey declined, and the concept changed completely. Son of the Mask arrived in 2005 under director Lawrence Guterman. It follows a man played by Jamie Kennedy who finds the mask and unintentionally conceives a child while wearing it. The boy has the mask's powers without needing to wear it. Meanwhile Loki, the Norse god who originally made the mask and is played by Alan Cumming, searches the human world for it.

  The film had an $84 million budget, earned $17 million at the domestic box office and took in $40 million abroad. Ben Stein returns as Dr. Arthur Neuman to reestablish the link between the mask and Loki. He is the only actor to appear in both films and the animated series.

  The Stanley Ipkiss version of the Mask later turned up in Space Jam: A New Legacy, released in 2021. He sits among the Warner Bros. Serververse inhabitants watching the basketball match between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad. Nearby are two versions of the Penguin, one from the 1966 Batman television series and one from the 1992 film Batman Returns.

  The comics took a gentler turn with Itty Bitty Mask. A mild-mannered zookeeper named Herman Shazbert buys his wife a strange mask, and the whole family wants a turn. The short-lived Itty Bitty line was sillier and kid-friendly, similar to DC Comics' Tiny Titans, which was also illustrated by Art Baltazar. Dark Horse also released Itty Bitty Hellboy, Itty Bitty Comics: Grimmiss Island and Itty Bitty Hellboy: The Search for the Were-Jaguar.

  Dark Horse has also published three omnibus collections. The first, from the 13th of August 2008, gathers The Mask #0-4, The Mask Returns #1-4 and The Mask Strikes Back #1-5. The second, from the 11th of March 2009, collects The Hunt for Green October, World Tour, Southern Discomfort, the zombie Ipkiss story and Toys in the Attic. The third, the Adventures of the Mask Omnibus, appeared on the 15th of July 2009. It gathers the movie adaptation, twelve issues of Adventures of the Mask, Virtual Surreality, Angry Young Mask and No Mask Is an Island. The omnibuses leave out the bonus material from the original trade paperbacks, including deleted pages, author forewords and retrospectives. Second editions of the first two arrived in 2019, the same year as the I Pledge Allegiance to the Mask! revival.

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