If you've been following Scott Snyder's Absolute Batman, you already know that Black Mask's Party Animal masks do more than hide someone’s identity. What else they did was unclear. In Absolute Batman No. 3, Eddie Nygman's AI (AL as he’s been calling it) explains everything it does and it's a genius move for Black Mask.
The masks of the Party Animals motivate the wearers with the one thing most people love. It uses money as an incentive. However, Black Mask isn’t a halfway crook. He uses a cryptocurrency called Black Coin to keep his involvement and the spenders anonymous. And with things like robbery, arson, and murder all coming with a different pay scale, a person can commit all the chaos Black Mask wants to their level of comfort.
If you’re wondering how high the pay can get, Eddie Nygma’s Al says a person can become “quite wealthy quite fast.” When Bruce asks AL how he can stop the network, AL says it’s too expansive to be terminated. There are deposits of masks worldwide with hundreds or thousands of members.
Later, Harvey Dent calls Bruce to give him information on the Ark M (like Arkham) Fund he asked about. After saying it could have gotten him fired, Harvey says it comes from a company called J.K. Holdings which specializes in private prisons. J.K. Holdings' investors are people who work in biotech, pharm, and genomics firms. And that’s not the end of it. It looks like the plan could be to turn Gotham City into a private prison. At the very least build one there.
Scott Snyder is 3-for3- with perfect Batman stories, but this one was the best. Finally seeing who and what Batman/Bruce Wayne are up against was shocking. Most of The Dark Knight’s enemies are local crooks. Not Absolute Black Mask (who I’m still not convinced is Roman Sionis). This guy isn’t just a villain. He’s downright evil. Paying people to cause carnage and possibly opening a private prison to appease his investors is nasty work. Plus we learn that he's good enough to beat a professional fighter in hand-to-hand combat.
This isn't the end of the Black Mask's mayhem, There are still three more issues to go before Batman’s showdown with Black Mask and his Party Animals. It should be a bloody battle that leads to something even crazier in Scott Snyder's next arc. Stay tuned to Caped Crusades to see what that is.
Where does Absolute Black Mask rank on your list of new villains? Let us know on the Bam Smack Pow Bluesky, Instagram, and Twitter.