I Pledge Allegiance To The Mask #3

Dark Horse Comics

Writer: Christopher Cantwell

Art: Patric Reynolds & Lee Loughridge

I’m not sure what to make of this issue. I’ve been a fan of the Mask franchise ever since seeing the Jim Carrey film as a kid. It got me to try out the comics and the animated series, I even liked Son of the Mask. I’ve enjoyed most of this latest miniseries and its dark humour but I’m afraid issue three is the weak link.
My main worry about this series and also what drew me to it was the political satire it promised. The biggest news stories in American politics these past few years have involved Donald Trump so I expected he’d be referenced here. What worried me is that this book would focus too heavily on Trump without being smart enough to handle parodying him.

The thing about writing a parody of any politician or political situation is that you’re always going to offend someone. That’s fine on its own. Not everyone can like everything but you’ve got to be sensitive to the tastes of your target audience(TA). The political themes of this series will naturally appeal to those with an interest in American politics. In particular, this series would likely appeal to leftists since by all appearances it seemed to be parodying right-wing politics. A lot of that TA will be familiar with what’s been happening with Trump over the past few years. That familiarity is what wrecks the humour of this issue.

Trump has got to be one of the most over-the-top figures in the history of politics. Ever since he first started campaigning for president he’s consistently shown himself to be crooked, ill-tempered, misogynistic, racist and dishonest. Despite this, he’s still been charismatic enough to maintain a good amount of support from the American public. It’s gotten to the point where even fictional, corrupt politicians like Mayor Quimby look normal in comparison. That means if you’re using exaggeration to parody Trump you need to really go all-out to make it work. If you don’t then the humour will fail and left-wing readers in the TA who may have suffered under this Republican administration are just left with an unfunny reminder of their reality.

Most of this issue involves a public debate between Kathy Matthews and the Big head killer. Cantwell is clearly trying to contrast this situation with the Trump/Clinton debates. We see the big head killer making promises of all the horrible things he’s going to do to immigrants while his supporters scream “Fake news!” at his opponent. Eventually, this results in calls to “Lock her up” and Big head encourages his supporters to attack Matthews. It’s hard to find it funny given how many violent incidents have occurred at Trump-related events, sometimes with his support. As I mentioned, the exaggeration simply doesn’t go far enough and there isn’t really anything to challenge the reader. It’s like someone just copy and pasted real-life events and added some extra blood.

Of course, this isn’t the whole book but the rest of it feels kind of like filler. The issue starts by showing us a prior event where a black man is using the mask to confront white supremacists. It’s entertaining but the character was written out of the story before anything really happened with him. Other than what I’ve already mentioned there wasn’t much more going on. We see another snippet of how the mask ended up back in Edge city. It’s a nice detail but at this point in the series, it didn’t feel like it added much. After this, we get a couple of pages of random fighting in Big head’s campaign offices. On its own it’s fine. It had some nice slapstick violence but even after reading the last two issues I have no clue why this fight happened or what purpose it served.

Finally, we get a sex scene with Matthews setting up the final issue. It’s the one thing I liked about this issue since it didn’t feel gratuitous. Reynolds and Loughridge don’t try to over-sexualize her with their art and the whole thing is portrayed realistically. I thought it was interesting how Cantwell wrote the scene to showcase the change in Kathy Matthews’ behaviour. She’d had Big head and his supporters shouting her down all through the debate, effectively forcing her into a quiet, submissive role. Now, after being attacked by those supporters she’s finally in an aggressive mood, like the sex scene shows, and she’s ready to go on the offensive. It’s a great contrast.

The art by Patric Reynolds and Lee Loughridge is once again great. Reynolds maintains the dark, noir-inspired pencilwork from the previous issues while Loughridge and his use of muted colours still bring a unique character to the pages of this book.

I was disappointed by this issue. It wasn’t bad enough to make me drop the series, especially this close to the end but I considered it. Hopefully, the final issue will be a massive improvement and this mini-series can go out with a bang rather than a whimper.