#The mask series#

Arcudi and Mahnke published four stories on Mayhem, which would be later collected as The Mask #0. Chris Warner had recommended two new aspiring talents for re-launching the character: writer John Arcudi and artist Doug Mahnke Their interpretation of Richardson's base concept was to create an anti-hero half-way between Tex Avery's crazy cartoons and The Terminator's destructive force, and the end result was the 'whacky' character as we know it today.

#The mask series#

In 1989, the new look of 'The Mask' (as the character would be officially called) was launched as part of Dark Horse's series Mayhem. With the help of artist Chris Warner, Richardson was able to revert back to its original drawings and start afresh. In addition, the increasing complexity of the plot and the difficulty in meeting deadlines forced the team to consider ending the strip after 21 issues. The character was different from what Mike Richardson had originally sketched. When Mike Richardson founded Dark Horse Comics in 1986, the concept of the Mask was pitched to writer/artist Mark Badger and the result was a strip called 'Masque' as part of the early Dark Horse Presents series. However, such concept would not become a reality on paper until 1985 when a first sketch of The Mask was made for APA-5, an amateur press publication created by writer Mark Verheiden. He or she would be a mix between Steve Ditko's The Creeper and Bob Kane's the Joker. The idea was to create anti-hero of bizarre nature, with a weird sense of humour, and whose actions were unpredictable to the reader. The base concept of the character was created by Mike Richardson in the early 1980s. For this reason, police and newspapers always refer to him or her as 'Big Head'. The only constant is a large, green and bald head, large teeth and mouth, and a bizarre voice. The wearer has the power to do nearly anything he or she wants to, to the point he or she becomes a living killer cartoon.Р”Вifferent characters wear the mask throughout the story, each with a different outcome driven by their ambitions and emotions. Once donning the old mask, the wearer becomes endowed with superpowers capable of bending reality, and behaves dangerously violent as the mask brings out the wearer's dark personality. The Mask is not a fixed character but an entity with no name trapped inside an old jade mask.