The Mask #3

The penultimate chapter of Dark Horse's four-part series arrives with a cover by Doug Mahnke that pulls no punches — the grinning, green-faced Mask stands center stage, shirt bloodied and tie askew, surrounded by a chaotic tangle of battered thugs in a grimy brick alleyway. Mahnke's painted linework gives the whole scene a gleefully unhinged energy, balancing the character's manic smirk against some genuinely brutal carnage. If the first two issues left you wondering how wild things could get, this cover makes a pretty convincing argument that the answer is "considerably.