100 Days of Comics! 059/100: Masks2 #5 (2015)
Okay so! Dynamite Entertainment! Have you ever vaguely wondered who owned the Green Hornet and the Shadow (of ‘the Shadow knows’)? Dynamite, apparently. And today’s pull from the box of mystery, is Masks2. The second of Dynamite’s big crossover miniseries that draws a bunch of their characters together for shenanigans.
But when I pulled it from the box, I briefly wondered whether the PBTA superhero game I kickstarted had a tie-in comic. I would kind of like one, actually.
In Masks2 #5, the various heroes have been cast through time and space in three groups. The narrative jumps around between the three groups but eh I’m going to handle it group by group.
Thunderbolt, Miss Fury, probably another Miss Fury, and Green Llama end up in dinosaur times. Where Thunderbolt - the man who uses 100% of his brain - uppercuts an allosaurus into unconsciousness.
One of the Miss Furys is pretty impressed but the other isn’t and also notes that Green Llama (amazing name) just floated away. Green Llama apparently is one of the most powerful beings of his time. With control over vast magical powers, bizarre energies, nature, and even life itself. And he’s detecting something strange. The others follow him but one of the Miss Furys attracts an ambush of raptors by yelling at the Llama.
The heroes try fighting off the raptors but Green Llama just causes a tree to grow, flinging the raptors away. And probably breaking their legs so they can’t hunt. Poor things.
Anyway, Green Llama has also uncovered the strange thing he detected. A bunch of weird masks stuck to some kind of wall with swirled patterns. But who could have put them there in dinosaur times??
The second group consists of two Green Hornets, two Katos, and a Spider. They’ve ended up at a masquerade and by asking around they learn that they’re at Prince Prospero’s party and that the doors have been welded shut. Like in the story ‘Masque of the Red Death’?
And when the clock strikes 12, the Red Death comes down the stairs but unmasks as some doofy mustache guy to mass applause from the partygoers.
Spider asks around some more and learns that this is the annual re-enactment of ‘Masque of the Red Death’ and that the doors and windows are barred shut because “it keeps the sacrifices from escaping!”
And now the third group. Consisting of Black Bat, Black Sparrow, Black Terror, the Shadow, and Lady Satan. She even lampshades that it was all the dark characters got sent to what seems like a post-apocalyptic plague times.
Some gross plague zombies or something come shambling out to attack this group of Masks and they unhesitatingly fight back, the Shadow even gleefully doing his “The Shadow knows!” jump and cackle and shoot people a lot thing.
But there are so many of them that the heroes beat feet. The Shadow notes that the plague people seem to move against them with purpose, as if serving an unseen master.
The Masks get cornered in an alley but suddenly the Spider shows up opening a door that they can escape through. Lady Satan creates an illusionary decoy for the plague people to chase and the Masks all flee with the Spider.
The Shadow asks whether the others are with the Spider but the Spider is confused. Why, he’s been here alone for weeks!
DUN DUN DUN!
Possibly time travel wackiness. And overall a lot of mysteries going on. But someone punched a dinosaur and it was pretty rad.
And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we read comics for?