(Established by Verheiden, APA-5 featured material from several artists and writers who’d go on to work in comics professionally, including Richardson, as well as Sin City auteur Frank Miller.) In Richardson’s mind, the Mask was some kind of cross between the Joker and Steve Ditko’s the Creeper, a deranged vigilante immediately recognizable for his green hair and electric-yellow skin. Mike Richardson, the eventual founder of Dark Horse Comics, came up with the concept in 1982 and later debuted it in an amateur press publication called APA-5. The Mask dates back further than that auto shop bloodbath in the pages of Mayhem. “If anybody tells you that they were sure it was going to be that kind of a hit,” says screenwriter Mark Verheiden, who has a story credit on the film, “they’re crazy.”
The mask smokin movie#
Today, the movie is a relic of a completely unrecognizable time in Hollywood, when a comic book adaptation was better off divorced from its source material and not linked to any larger continuity-especially a comic book movie based on a cult title about a Travis Bickle type who dons a magic mask. It may sound bizarre, but The Mask became a sensation in spite of its association with comics, not because of it. What’s more impressive is that all of this success came long before superhero movies were regularly setting and smashing box office records. Released on July 29, 1994, the movie made off with $120 million domestically, inspired an animated series, ushered a couple of catchphrases into the lexicon (along with one hall-of-fame meme, a little further down the line), introduced audiences to a young actress named Cameron Diaz, and helped anoint Carrey as the most exciting comedy talent in the movie business at the time. Still, despite the character’s bloody origins, convoluted publishing history, and years-long journey to the screen, The Mask ended up transforming into a bona fide blockbuster. A little more violent than I would have anticipated, but it was a lot of fun.” -Mike Richardson, founder of Dark Horse Comics “They really captured the essence of the character that I had envisioned. “All of a sudden he has this chance to get away with a bunch of shit.” “You see a guy who’s downtrodden, he’s got issues, he feels like the world has kicked him a bunch,” says comic book artist Doug Mahnke, who worked on Mayhem and several other miniseries featuring the Mask. It grants him boundless powers, but it actually amplifies-rather than changes-who he is and brings out his essential nature. Wearing the mask allows Ipkiss to lash out in horrifying ways against the people he thinks have humiliated and emasculated him. What does the comic book incarnation of Stanley Ipkiss do with his superpowered fashion accessory? He kills those two cheat mechanics he slaughters a biker gang that beat him up earlier, splashing one of the members with gasoline and then tossing a lit match in his direction he finds an old elementary school teacher who embarrassed him when he was a kid and stomps her face in, right in front of her students. But years before the Mask was synonymous with Carrey’s shape-shifting mug and that yellow zoot suit, the green-headed troublemaker was envisioned as an ultraviolent maniac, quick with a trigger and eager to cross names off his (literal!) list of enemies. (They’re in need of the best proctologist in town, but still alive.) That’s of course what happens in the 1994 big-screen adaptation of The Mask, starring Carrey as Stanley Ipkiss, a pushover who comes across a magical mask that lets him unleash his id and become a living Looney Tune. Longtime fans of Jim Carrey’s movies know a different, more sanitized resolution, in which the mechanics get roughed up but survive.
The mask smokin series#
Leaving behind a trail of corpses is how the Mask gets his laughs in Mayhem, a short-lived anthology series published by Dark Horse Comics back in 1989. One of them is hanging from the ceiling, tangled up in a chain with tools sticking out of his head, blood oozing from the wounds the other has had an entire muffler stuffed into his mouth, his head cartoonishly warped into the shape of the car part, his eyes bulging and bloodshot. When we see the garage later, police are there surveying a murder scene-the mechanics have been savagely slain. What happens next is probably less familiar. “I’m not going to pay a lot for this muffler,” he says in a menacing tone. Then, suddenly, a guy wearing a snot-green mask, a garish jacket, and a toothy grin shows up in their shop, holding a muffler and sounding like one of those hapless clients out for revenge.
The mask smokin cracked#
Here’s a scene that should be familiar to anyone who’s seen The Mask: Inside of a garage, two dirtbag mechanics are yucking it up, kidding about the various ways they’ve screwed over their customers-puncturing somebody’s brake lines, ignoring a cracked gasket to make sure the chump has to come back.