"A Lot of Gooey Mush" for Valentine's Day

 Ah man, I had a whole month to post more bizarre lists (Which I was doing a lot of anyway. Come to think of it, when was the last time I actually reviewed something?) and I blew it all away on real life stuff! But, never let it be said that I miss out on holidays, even ones I hate. Here’s a “romantic” story from Vault of Horror #26 (actually #15) illustrated by Johnny Craig that’s sure to be an antidote to the artificial lovey-dovey atmosphere of this most superficial and pathetic of holidays. Do I even need to mention the post where I sang praises of this story before? Enjoy your chocolates!

~

Now here's a guy who really knew how to celebrate Valentine's Day!

Ten Funniest Moments from Arcudi & Mahnke's Mask comics:

 Ah, The Mask. This is a series I’ve wanted to cover for some time now. Mix in the Creeper, the Joker, toss in a little Dial “H” for Hero, throw in a dash of Tex Avery, a dash of Freddy Krueger, a pinch of The Toxic Avenger, and voila; you have Big Head aka The Mask.

 This was a series I genuinely looked forward to when each issue came out (Which wasn’t too frequently since each new “chapter” was released as a mini-series). It was a brilliant send-up of the revenge fantasy aspect of the superhero genre: “I must share these powers with mankind, use them to protect and serve others in need---but first…”

 I don’t mean to give the wrong impression of course, the big attraction of the series by and large was the psychotic over-the-top mayhem (Appropriately enough, the version of The Mask that everyone is familiar with debuted in a series called Mayhem) that whoever wore the titular mask would get into.

 It could be silly and light-hearted:

 And it could also be nightmarishly terrifying:

 So since January is list month, I thought I’d rattle off what I consider the funniest moments from the “original” John Arcudi/Doug Mahnke run. One of the more underrated aspects of the series is just how funny other characters could be besides whoever was currently Big Head, so I’ve made sure to spotlight some sequences where he doesn’t even appear.

 And don’t worry folks, I’m not neglecting the other non-Arcudi & Mahnke Mask series or the prototypical “Masque” run by Mark Badger from Dark Horse Presents, but a retrospective of funny moments from those series will have to wait for a different time.

 10) Single friggin’ file children!

 Part of the fun of the Ipkiss-focused stories was seeing the deconstruction of traditional revenge fantasy tropes, like the ‘asshole victim” whom everyone hates. For example, in this bit, Stanley goes after his former first grade teacher who had once humiliated him. At first the class finds his antics funny:

 Then not so funny, even a boy who she had previously humiliated…

 Now that is how you pull off black comedy. It’s funny, but you know those kids are all going to need therapy.

 9) Night of the Return of the Living Ipkiss…kinda (seriously, that’s the title):

 The subsequent Mask series released after the 1994 film had been both increasingly silly and increasingly lighter in tone, without the dark humor and splatter-based gags of the original. Even the last Arcudi/Mahnke series, The Mask Strikes Back, had been considerably less violent than what had come before. The 1994 film and the subsequent (quite good) cartoon series had also firmly implanted the idea into people’s minds that Stanley Ipkiss was the one true mask-wearer, and people complained about him not being featured in the comics (even though he was dead as a door-nail by the end of the original Mayhem run).

 So for the anthology Decade: A Dark Horse short-story Collection, Arcudi & Mahnke made sure to bring Stanley back, scarier and more vengeful than ever:

 Unfortunately, he proved no match against the power of…continuity!

 Never has a Fuck You to people unfamiliar with the original series been funnier.

 8) What’s wrong with your faaaaaace?

 One of the great things about Arcudi & Mahnke’s run was how they both evolved but never lost sight of what made the earlier stories work. For the last mini-series, Mahnke really jazzed the art up with a 90’s ambience and Image Comics-style cross-hatching, leather jackets, chains, etc.

 But none of that overrode the ‘charm” of the series. Here, for example, is a one-page sequence of Big Head after willingly allowing himself to be arrested. Simple, but I know a classic gag strip when I see it:

 Gotta love those facial expressions, and the ‘zoot suit” line. Hmmm, I wonder what they were referencing?

 7) The Wild Ride of Uhh Jerry:

 The entire sequence in the first mini-series of Stanley’s battle with the Edge City PD is hilarious, but this part just cracks me up. Stanley steals a police car with some poor Schmuck in it, and hilarity ensues:

 “I’ll never shop here again!”. What a perfect one-liner, and what a funny gag that would have  been if Uhh Jerry didn’t interrupt the flow by pointing out the cops. He is a true force of chaos, a kindred spirit to Big Head/Stanley. His being in the back seat symbolizes…something.

 Unfortunately, poor Uhh Jerry comes to a sad end when Kellaway rams the car off the road in a last ditch attempt to catch Stanley. He will live on forever in our hearts. *Sniff*

 6) The only time in history that a balloon animal has been funny:

 In the second mini-series (although it is collected as one with the first), Kellaway obtains the mask and uses it to become a crime-fighter, engaging in the sort of crime-fighting that Stanley always said he was going to do, but never got around to because he was too busy murdering everyone who had so much as looked at him funny.

 Kellaway’s tenure as Big Head, unfortunately, wasn’t much cleaner than Stanley’s, despite his heroic pretensions.

 Among the first bad guys he goes after are some convenience store robbers. We know they’re evil, because they shoot old ladies:

 Ooh, I wonder what’s in store for them? Could it be….a gruesome revenge? Kellaway corners the two and...

  Pretty different from how that same gag went down in the movie, huh folks?

 5) Stanley predicts what will probably be lyrics from the next hit rap song in 2013:

 Evil. Pure evil, but admit it, you laughed. Ouchie.

4) The worst henchmen always make for the funniest henchmen:

 Proving that The Mask wasn’t just built around the gory antics of a green-faced monster, Arcudi and Mahnke more than amply demonstrate their ability to milk comedy out of ordinary people (well, okay, they’re mobsters but you get the point):

 Never let it be said that Arcudi and Mahnke don’t expand on throwaway gags; the two halfwit hit men actually do end up attacking the place during lunch hour:

 3) Walter meets Don Mozzo:

 As great a bunch of characters as those two hit men were, the greatest criminal in the series is undoubtedly Walter, who becomes the main villain of the strip for the rest of the Arcudi/Mahnke run. In fact, now that I think about it, Walter may just be the best character in the series period, greater even than Uhh Jerry. Research indicates that he may, in fact, be the greatest character in comics history. He may even rival Armless Tiger-Man!

Walter is a hulking, mute mob enforcer who is inexplicably impervious to harm. He’s part silent mob goon, part Frankenstein Monster, part Hulk, Part Solomon Grundy, part Terminator, part Jason Voorhees, and part Harpo Marx. He doesn’t say anything, but you can bet he makes his presence felt, like this sickeningly funny sequence where he meets up with the series’ other main villain; Don Mozzo (the same mob boss from the previous sequence):

 Scorcese eat your heart out.

2) Walter obtains the mask:

 Eventually, in the last issue of the last series, Walter finally obtains the mask. Considering how powerful he already is, how much more powerful can he possibly get? Oh boy, the heroes are fucked…

 Huh?

 This actually made me laugh out loud the first time I read it. Walter went on to become a recurring villain on the cartoon (where this sequence was pretty faithfully adapted) and got a justly deserved limited series of his own called Campaign of Terror.

1) Wait…..whaaa?

 Aaaand number one on the list!

 I think of all the Arcudi/Mahnke mini-series, the second part “Mask Justice” starring Kellaway is my favorite. The internal conflict going on with Kellaway is fascinating, the consequences of vigilante tactics are dealt with more realistically than almost any superhero comic I’ve read, and the creator’s comedic timing is at it’s best.

 And then we have this sequence, where Kellaway saves a stereotypical Italian truck driver while disguised as a stereotypical Italian barber. What follows is quite possibly the most WTF moment in the whole series:

 …………………………

 ??????????????????????

 ……………………

Um, well, we do indeed live in the same world as Frank Sinatra, so he’s right I guess.

Well, that wraps this up. Don’t try on any strange masks, avoid hulking mute mob enforcers, and remember kiddies, this is Sinatra’s world.

New Year's with The Spirit

 And so the year is at an end. Despite all the craziness that went down (Which I’ll get to), I’m relieved to say that it flew by fast for me.

 Here’s Will Eisner’s “A Moment of Destiny” from the December 29^th 1946 Spirit Section. As usual, there are a lot of “-isms” that come up, but don’t let that spoil the fun. It’s an irony-tinged comedy of errors you won’t soon forget. All © Will Eisner.

 By the way, as much as I enjoy this story, I must point out that it’s a retelling of an earlier Spirit story, the 1941 Thanksgiving special “Eustace the Turkey”, which I had intended to post for Thanksgiving, but couldn’t because several of the pages just wouldn’t scan.

 It may take place on a different date and involve a different sort of bird, but the basic plot remains the same, with the Napoleon and Hamlet references intact.

 The biggest difference is that the Parelli character isn’t really Italian, but an American thief in disguise. The fate of the bird is also somewhat crueler:

 As I’ve demonstrated, carbon-copy retellings like this could be both pretty shameless and pretty common, but it says something about Will Eisner’s talent that, even when ripping himself off, he could still make his retelling as entertaining as the original, even better in some aspects.

~

 Let’s also take a moment to recap the triumphs and tragedies of this year:

 - Politicians, the media, celebrities, and soccer moms all over the country showed their true colors when they tried to turn various horrific national tragedies into blame games so that they could further their own vendettas er, I mean agendas, and by contrast, made the entertainment industry, it’s fans, and even otherwise notoriously self-absorbed celebrities come out looking like the bigger men.

 - The same media also helped alert many comics fans to their colorblindness by revealing to us that the Joker’s hair was orange, when we’d all thought it was green this whole time.

 - People started finally catching on that Breaking Bad was good.

 - People started finally catching on that The Walking Dead was an overrated potboiler that people were taking too seriously. Rednecks certainly helped.

 - Jaleel White busting a move on Dancing with the Stars proved that the 90’s truly have returned.

 - DC comics officially became 90’s Image, possibly to go along with Jaleel’s plot to bring the 90’s back.

 - Speaking of signs of the coming apocalypse, Harold Camping moved further up on everyone’s shit list when Mayan Apocalypse Day rolled around this month and no one had any enthusiasm for it after last year’s big bash. I’d been hoping to go buy some old clothes from Goodwill, fill them with dry ice and leave them outside to scare my neighbors into thinking the rapture had begun. I also had plans to dress up like a crazy homeless person and run around telling everyone that the end is nigh. Ahh, such fun that would have been, but no one had any enthusiasm.

Party pooper.

 - Marvel tried yet another gimmick to make people give a shit about post OMD Spider-Man. People still have failed to give that shit. 

 - Amazon review bashing became popularized by comedy website Least Helpful.com, proving I’m not alone.

 - Seven Psychopaths proved to be the best dark comedy anyone has made in ages. Seriously, check it out.

 - The Amazing Spider-Man proved to be incredibly well-made and enjoyable, but ultimately unnecessary.

 - The above also applies to Cooke’s Minutemen limited series.

 - In a truly ballsy move, Cracked.com finally took a stand and called out the idiots who whine about Justin Bieber everywhere on the internet. I wish someone had done it sooner. Personally, I would have gone more in depth by showing how, if they really were the mature and educated music sophisticates that they all pretend to be, then they wouldn’t even know who he is in the first place. I’d never even have heard of him if it wasn’t for all of their whining. As far as I’m concerned, his haters are his fans. Still, it's a start.

 - The Avengers was above and beyond awesome.

~

 And so that’s that. Happy New Year!