Mask not for anyone.
Creative Staff:
Story: Art Baltazar & Franco
Art: Art Baltazar
What They Say:
After the fiasco in the zoo, the mayor tries on the Mask! Now as Mayor Mask paints the town green, the once-quiet burg suddenly becomes the most exciting and crazy place on the planet! Find out how it feels to have the Mask running things! Fun! Crazy! And a little scary!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Itty Bitty Mask series has certainly been silly and fun to read, which is exactly what I wanted from it. The first two issues have done a lot of amusing little gags and the like, all while playing to familiar ongoing jokes that can make you groan and smile at the same time, especially when it come to the little shopkeeper in yellow that’s always trying to get the mask back. We’ve had it in a couple of different places so far, but this time around it manages to grab a small seat of political power and uses it in some outlandish ways. And unlike past instances, it does the sequence where the mask latches onto someone, namely the mayor in this case, as a minor flashback instead of the starting point here.
The starting point is just the amusement of the mayor as the mask going off and reshaping the town in the best way possible, Mask-style. While Clarence Middleton III was properly elected, nobody elected him as the mask and they’re all paying for it quickly here. He’s having a lot of fun in making it a garishly colored city, changing the look of the police cars and police uniforms as well to make it sparkle ever so. He also takes things a step further in many all streets one way streets that point in the same direction. And then screws it all up even worse by making them circular so you just keep going round and round. While the mayor was fun when he was shooting fireworks out of his pants, this is less so. And even less so when he sets up a health initiative that has everyone running a 365k race.
But where the mask goes off the rails, again comically, is when he gets so big that he floats into the sky and into space to devour the moon in one big gulp. He ends up just chewing part of it, but leaves the rest after talking to a Yoda-like moon martian there that’s displeased with what happened to their world. It’s going bigger than before to be sure but it’s done with such silliness and design that you definitely grin through all of it as it plays out. While things do circle back to the Big City after a few apologies, and we get some silliness with Shazbert trying to reclaim the mask for his wife, it also opens the door to what the next issue is all about as other aliens from the moon are intent on getting the Mask to exact punishment for destroying almost half their world. Silly little aliens from the moon.
In Summary:
The Itty Bitty Mask series continues to be fun to read as its done in the style that I like that Franco and Baltazar work with and it gives us a more kid-friendly Mask in the right way. We get a lot more silliness here and some minor story progression, but there’s not a lot of story to begin with. Which is more than fine with a book like this because it’s all about enjoying the wacky adventures and silly things that happen. The mayor as the Mask certainly has its moments as it unfolds and I definitely liked that it went bigger than before with him taking a big bite out of the moon. Simple but really cute and fun and definitely easy to share with others to get them into the silliness of it all.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: January 14th, 2015
MSRP: $2.99
