MYTHCOMICS: "BLACK MASK: LOSING FACE" (BATMAN #386-387, DETECTIVE COMICS #553, 1985)

(NOTE: as discussed in this essay, continued story-lines from this period of DC's BATMAN franchise alternated chapters in the pages of both the BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS periodicals. I have chosen the title of one chapter to represent the three-part story-line devoted to the villain Black Mask.)

Contrary to the cover-copy on BATMAN #386, new villain Black Mask was not affirmed by Bat-fans (so far as I can tell) as being either crazier than the Joker or deadlier than Ra's Al Ghul. But I believe he's the only villain co-created by Doug Moench who became a recurring Bat-foe in the hands of later raconteurs. The author's character of Nocturna arguably had more mythical potential, but possibly her charms became diffused from being interwoven into an ongoing soap opera. In contrast, Black Mask's myth is tightly structured from start to finish.

After a one-page intro emphasizing that the new villain will have a special enmity for Bruce Wayne, we're told that the infant version of Roman Sionis is first introduced to the "world of hard knocks" by an obstetrician in a surgical mask. Roman is not related to Bruce Wayne but baby Bruce is born only slightly after Roman, and the Wayne family is socially acquainted with the equally prominent Sionis family, who run a major cosmetics firm. As a boy Roman feels stultified by his parents, who register as superficial and indifferent. He then has a mind-wrenching encounter with a "masked" animal, a rabid raccoon who bites the youth and causes him to plunge into a nightmarish state, "an endless movie of his own making, played out somewhere deep behind his face." (This issue was published roughly a year ahead of the first issue of Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, in which young Bruce Wayne had a similar hallucinatory experience with a monstrous bat.) 

Roman recovers, and in his young manhood, his father brings him into the cosmetics business, which is given the symbol-fraught name of "Janus." Roman quickly rises to vice president of Janus Cosmetics, and in that position of power he becomes fixated upon a new model, whose real name is not disclosed and whose professional name is yet another myth-reference, "Circe." Roman's parents voice their disapproval of such a low-class liaison, and within no time, their mansion burns down, killing them both. Roman avoids any suspicion for their deaths, but his overweening pride brings him down, as he almost bankrupts Janus Cosmetics with his foolhardy schemes. Bruce Wayne extends the hand of charity to the company solely due to his family's friendship with Roman's parents, but only if Roman agrees to "lose face" by resigning as president. Roman then seeks to forge a new identity by desecrating the mausoleum of the parents he murdered, tearing a fragment of ebony-hued wood from his father's casket. From this wood he forges the visage of his new fully criminal identity of Black Mask, which he uses to organize a criminal gang, the False Face Society. He even holds the first meeting of the society in the family tomb, with his parents' coffins in full view.

If Black Mask isn't the equal of Joker and Ra's Al Ghul in all respects, he's certainly on the same level of obsession, constantly prating about how masks give their wearer new powers. In addition to sending his gang to rob Gotham businesses, he also assassinates the men who took over Janus Cosmetics with a chemical created at the firm-- so that Black Mask's mask doesn't in the least conceal his true identity as the former Roman Sionis. However, he doesn't kill Circe, his former lover who deserted him when times got tough, but he uses one of his flesh-corroding masks to destroy her beauty and make her his slave. 

When Batman and the new Robin can't track down the False Face Society, the Caped Crusader uses Bruce Wayne's resources to throw a masquerade party, knowing that Black Mask will try to attend the affair, despite his anticipating a trap. The villain dons a raccoon-mask in deference to the beast who initiated him into evil and attempts to kill Bruce Wayne. He fails at this goal but escapes. Yet Robin tracks him to the crypt, and soon the Dynamic Duo brave the crypt, battling Black Mask's thugs. The main villain again escapes, this time to the mansion of Roman Sionis, The heroes follow and fight two more of Black Mask's goons, while the mastermind raves about how he needs to kill off his old self Roman Sionis. He sets the mansion on fire and almost kills his new self, but Batman rescues him. The fire, however, scars and blackens his natural physiognomy, which from then on is Black Mask's most distinguishing characteristic.

In a brief coda, the disfigured Circe visits the jail where Black Mask is confined, but does not see her former lover. She leaves behind the mask he crafted to hide her disfigurement, implicitly rejecting Roman's obsession with drawing power from concealing one's face. She also invokes the properties of the classical Circe by referring to herself as a "witch," but unlike the sorceress this Circe would seem to be rejecting all forms of false transformation. (Though this was a good send-off for this minor support-character, regrettably Moench brought her back for a second appearance before he finished his BATMAN tenure.) In this initial appearance Black Mask is meant to be the obverse of Batman, using masks to conceal, rather than reveal, the truth of his own nature. I have the general impression that subsequent versions of the character abandon his specific obsession with masks, making him more of an all-around gang-boss, as he is in the UNDER THE RED HOOD continuity. Moench's version is more psychologically intriguing.

I should note that this is a rare mythcomic with an uncanny phenomenality. Neither Batman nor Robin use any special weapons, and Black Mask's only diabolical device is his corrosive cosmetic, which registers at the level of the uncanny.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE GHOST OF KRYPTON PAST" (DC COMICS PRESENTS #82, 1985)

 

Though Superman and Adam Strange were created over twenty years apart, and only one of them was explicitly conceived to be a DC Comics hero, both share some inspiration from a hero created over twenty years before Superman: Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter, first appearing in 1912's A PRINCESS OF MARS. The indebtedness of Adam Strange is more obvious. Earthman John Carter was mysteriously spirited to the red planet Mars, where he indulged in lots of fighting in defense of his cherished princess Dejah Thoris, whom he married in the third book. Adam Strange was yanked from Earth by a Zeta-Beam originating on the planet Rann in Alpha Centauri, and once he reached Rann, he indulged in lots of fighting in defense of his girlfriend Alanna (who would become Strange's wife some time after the demise of the original series). Superman's debt, though, is more apparent than real. Though it seems well established that Jerry Siegel was familiar with the Burroughs hero, all he really emulated from John Carter was the idea of a super-strong hero amid lesser mortals. Siegel's original idea seemed to be that all denizens of Krypton had super-powers even on their own world. But once the Man of Steel fell under the aegis of other editors, the hero became much more Carter-like, powerless on his homeworld but empowered by the conditions of an alien planet.

Written by Cary Bates and both penciled and inked by Klaus Janson, "The Ghost of Krypton Past" (which happily does not force any other Dickensian tropes into the mix) opens with Adam and his wife enjoying a picnic on Rann. Alanna thinks Strange is trembling at her touch but it's really a Rann-quake, caused by the advent of a Kryptonian "ghost." The continuity of what happens next is muddled, but Strange apparently rescues her from the cataclysm, after which Alanna falls into a trance and starts speaking Kryptonese. This moves Strange to have his father-in-law Sardath summon Superman to Rann via the Zeta-Beam. 

As soon as the Man of Steel arrives, though, the happily married Alanna greets him like a trollop trying to pick up a sailor, remarking on the "physical and psychic magnificence" of the Kryptonian race. It's immediately evident that Alanna's being possessed by a spirit who's both vixenish and unsubtle-- she comes on to Superman right in front of her "husband"-- and on top of that, she speaks in tongues, or rather, the one tongue of Kryptonese. But even before Superman reveals the significance of the foreign phrase, the spirit changes Alanna into a monstrous form (with risible lobster-claws), wounds Strange, and escapes while Superman's helping his buddy.

Superman then provides a mini-history of the Kryptonian legend of Zazura, "a space-succubus, a female demon who subsisted by devouring the life-force of other human beings." It's not clear if Zazura is an alien creature or a metaphysical construct, though the former seems more likely, since we're also told that Zazura dwelled in space just beyond Krypton's atmosphere. This bit of retconning plays into a commonplace of the Krypton mythos: that for one reason or another, the super-advanced people of the planet eschewed space-travel, so that they were caught flatfooted when their world went boom. Thus Zazura, who for some time devoured any Kryptonian astronauts who came her way, bears indirect responsibility for the near-extinction of the race. Superman further theorizes that Rann has become infected by Zazura's presence since the Alpha Centauri star-system has passed through space once occupied by Krypton, and that the demoness plans to eradicate Rann to devour the energies of its inhabitants.

While Superman flies off to find the demon, Strange characteristically uses brain-power to deduce that Zazura isn't the only phenomenon that has appeared on Rann. Strange and his father-in-law learn that particles of crystal from Krypton's ancient "fire-falls" have entered Rann's atmosphere; crystals which weaken the creature the way kryptonite harms Kryptonians. When Strange finds his way to the locale from which Zazura is working her evil will, he finds that she's already subdued the Man of Steel. But the Champion of Rann shoots her with firefall-crystals, thus separating the spirit from the body of Alanna. This wound weakens the demon enough that Superman breaks free and administers the coup de grace: setting off Strange's second weapon-- a bomb full of firefall-crystals-- so that Zazura is destroyed and Rann is saved.

I said earlier that there's no precise proof that Zazura was in any way connected to Krypton's worship-systems; that she could as easily be an alien force interpreted as a "space succubus" (though negative incarnations of femininity were certainly a big part of the Judeo-Christian religion that influenced much of the Superman mythology). Being an alien rather than a magical demon doesn't keep Zazura from having metaphysical significance, though, and in any case the conclusion of "Ghost" reveals a different sort of mystical import. Rann, having passed into the space-sector of vanished Krypton, also came into contact with the spirits of that long dead race. Those spirits (whose plurality means that the title should have read "Ghosts") were aware of Zazura's malign plans. They, not Zazura, caused Alanna to speak her initial Kryptonese words, so that "their planet's last surviving son" would be called to Rann. As that world passes out of the Krypton sector, the final two pages show Superman enjoying a fleeting communion with his deceased ancestors.

"Ghost" is definitely far better than the usual run-of-the-mill stories seen in DC COMICS PRESENTS, and possibly artist Klaus Janson had some uncredited story input, in addition to his producing a stark yet evocative take on the wonderworlds of Rann and Krypton. Both Janson and Bates do credit to the classic Jerry Siegel-Wayne Boring story "Superman's Return to Krypton," wherein the Fire-Falls and other Kryptonian spectacles debuted. In addition, as shown above, a 1965 Supergirl story by Leo Dorfman deserves credit for first using the fire-falls as an exorcism-device, for when Supergirl becomes demon-possessed, only the surviving phenomenon of the falls can purge the evil in a Kryptonian's heart.

ADDENDUM: I initially didn't make much of Zazura's name, since it didn't seem to correlate with any established names from myth and legend. Of course I noticed that the demon's name begins with the last letter of the English language, while Alanna's begins with the first letter. This by itself could be an example of positive-negative mirroring, where "A" is "the beginning" and "Z" is "the end." But I then noticed that Bates (assuming he created the name) went a little further by (a) having the two names possess the same number of syllables, while (b) the first three letters of each name is a palindrome: ALA for Alanna, ZAZ for Zazura. A little more evidence of non-formulaic thinking in the story as a whole.