The Mask?

Ace of Knaves

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Watching The Mask on TV right now. One of my favourite films ever. I've seen many of you guys talk about the comics being brilliant and much more violent and adult than the film but retaining the ridiculously insane humour. This sounds right up my alley!

What are some good stories/trades/GNs to check out for some Mask madness?
 
Not spoiling anything, other than what you can read in quick marketing blurbs...

I have little doubt that you'll enjoy Arcudi's trilogy, but it's hard to even call the movie an adaptation of the comics. While both of them are good, they're so dissimilar that they're entirely different animals. Also, you should probably be aware that only two of the characters from the comics were even adapted to screen (Lt. Kellaway and Stanley). And even then, they only used the same names and changed everything else about the characters, except for the fact that Kellaway was a Lieutenant. The movie even needlessly gave him a first name, whereas it was a running joke in the comics that Kellaway's first name was never mentioned.

Also, Stanley is a mass murdering villain in the comics and not a "zero to hero" who works in a bank, until Kellaway gets the mask and becomes (most of the time) the driving character for the rest of the trilogy. You also might've heard that the person wearing the headgear is never referred to as "The Mask." That's something the movie made up. Whoever's wearing it is just called "Big-Head" in the books.

And how could I forget Walter and Kathy? Both of them are more important to the ongoing story than Ipkiss ever was, and equally as important as Lt. Kellaway, making their absence in the movie still kind of puzzling to this day, but oh well.

As for the Omnibus(es) that Gilpesh linked to, the only one that I can recommend is Volume 1, collecting Arcudi & Mahnke's original 3 stories. The second volume has plots written after the movie came out, and the influence of the film's different brand of comedy and tone is pretty obvious (even the last storyarc in Volume 1 is guilty of this). Things were a lot more watered down as they were trying to appeal to the wider market's new expectations of what The Mask should be.
 
As for the Omnibus(es) that Gilpesh linked to, the only one that I can recommend is Volume 1, collecting Arcudi & Mahnke's original 3 stories. The second volume has plots written after the movie came out, and the influence of the film's different brand of comedy and tone is pretty obvious (even the last storyarc in Volume 1 is guilty of this). Things were a lot more watered down as they were trying to appeal to the wider market's new expectations of what The Mask should be.
And the second volume has a very long super crossover where the Mask runs into a whole ton of Dark Horse super heroes. Don't forget that fact!
 

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