The first Mask mini-series ended with Lt. Kellaway burying the mask in his basement after finally realizing how much it was controlling him. The second mini-series begins with Kellaway trying to retrieve it to save himself from a gang of hitmen sent by a mob boss in retaliation for Kellaway's Big Hero Moment in the restaurant (though none of them realize he was "Big-Head" at the time. Kellaway gets shot just as he unearths it, and the killers take the mask, figuring it's valuable. One of them slips it on their getaway driver, a nervous stuttering guy, and Big-Head's back on the loose and soon running Don Mozzo's mob while Mozzo is hiding from any heat in Miami.
Kellaway does survive, but spends most of this mini-series in a coma. Which puts the focus on Kathy, who gave the mask to the lieutenant in the first place. She gets herself close to this new Big-Head, and convinces him to remove the mask. Her attempt to take it and leave quietly fails, as you can see, but she does escape.
Likely because she saw what the mask did to first Stanley, then Kellaway, Arcudi writes Kathy as the most reluctant to use it. Even Kellaway, after everything in the first mini-series, still decided to lock himself in the basement and try to dig up the mask rather than just escape out the back door. Kellaway justifies it with the idea there might be gunman covering the back door, but the smirk Mahnke draws suggests Kellaway's eager to use the mask against the guys. In contrast, when Kathy's locked herself in the attic, a bunch of goons after her, she's curled up in a corner, tears running down her face as the sounds of the guys busting down the door interrupt each panel. There's no glee or excitement, just a desperation to not die.
After that, she tries and fails to destroy it, and only puts it on again when some of Mob Boss Big-Head's earlier actions prompt a rocket launcher retaliation that injures innocent people. Of course, even then she busts out a big machine gun and drags a guy by his broken arm until he brings her to where Don Mozzo's hiding, fully intending to kill Mozzo. She exerts a level of control, but only to the extent she's a green-faced Punisher, capable of wondering where she keeps pulling absurdly large firearms from. When she's not in "control", Mahnke dispenses with the scowls and draws her wide-eyed with different sized pupils, running around with a flamethrower hooting like Daffy Duck.
The mini-series ends with Kathy rejecting the mask, having accepted you can't use it for "good", because it takes too much effort to fight the mask's will. Both the mask, and Walter (who she'd been fighting the entire final issue) appear to get lost in the bay after Kellaway makes a dramatic last-second save (with his partner's car.)
No comments:
Post a Comment