Masks & Mobsters #1

If there’s one thing I love, it’s crime comics.  I’ve been into crime stories since the very first “Sin City” graphic novel I picked up from a little comic shop in Arlington, TX when I was a junior in high school.  It was “That Yellow Bastard” and it was awesome.  So I went and read the other “Sin City” paperbacks, and then later on discovered “Powers” which blended the crime noir and superhero genres pretty seamlessly and made for wildly entertaining comics.

“Masks & Mobsters” is a book in this “Powers” vein, but instead of dealing with the cops and superheroes, it deals with the mob and how they react and adapt to the arrival of these superheros that always thwart their attempts at petty crime.  The book is set in the 1920s or 1930s it seems, everyone looks like they’re outta “Boardwalk Empire” or “Mad Men”, suits and fedoras and old school automobiles are prevalent throughout.  It comes to you from Monkeybrain comics, and admittedly I’ve never read anything from this publisher before.  But they’re doing something right, cause this book was pretty damned good.

Our story begins with Bobby, a hired gun for mob boss Sicario.  Sicario suspects that someone in his outfit is leaking info about the speakeasies that the gang is running, and he wants Bobby to find out who the rat is and stop the leak.  So Bobby sets off through the unnamed city, offing folks left and right, because (spoiler alert!) Bobby is the rat!  He’s got a vendetta against Sicario because Sicario had his dad whacked back in the day!  It’s a swerve that’s not really unexpected, but still gets the job done.

Doctor Daylight then makes his appearance, and he and Bobby have a brief squabble which ends with Doctor Daylight dead in the street.  This is bad, because now apparently the rest of the capes will come down hard on Bobby and the rest of Sicario’s men, unless Bobby can cover it up somehow.

And that’s where issue #1 leaves us.  All in all, a decent story from Joshua Williamson, one that leaves me intrigued as to what will happen when the other masks find out about the death of Doctor Daylight.  Or will Bobby successfully cover up things up?  I’ll definitely scoop the next issue and check out what happens, cause I wanna know where this goes from here.  Mike Henderson’s art is pretty sweet too.  The black and white color scheme really lends itself to the setting of the book, and the art looks kinda old school, all suits and ties and stuff (even Doctor Daylight sports a suit, just like you’d expect an old-school hero to do, very Golden Age).  A fun, good little story and a great intro to this world of “Masks & Mobsters”.