Comic Book Origins: The Black Mask

For those of you who don't know who this guy is, he's a batman villain that first appeared in Batman #386. Roman Sionis was born to wealthy parents, who had become rich via their cosmetics company. His parents were more concerned about their social status than their money however. In fact their social status was the most important thing to them, even more important than their own son. The Sionis family was close friends with the Wayne family, at least in public, so Roman was forced to befriend Thomas Wayne's son, Bruce.

Roman began to feel like his parents wore masks in  public and he hated that. He grew up resenting them and really, who can blame him? After graduating school he went to work at his fathers company, were he fell in love with a secretary. Unfortunately because she was working class his parents did not approve of the relationship and made Roman break up with her. In response to this Roman burnt down his parents mansion, killing them both in the process. Harsh huh? But afterwords he inherited his fathers business and fortune, would you kill your parents for a boatload of money?

Unfortunately Roman didn't have the appropriate know-how to run a business so he started to lose money but that's karma I guess. So in desperation he rushed a face care product to the shelves without the appropriate testing, the result was a toxin that disfigured your face, needless to say it wasn't very popular. His fiancee then left him in front of his staff, as if his life wasn't bad enough. Luckily for him, Bruce Wayne (who was now in charge of Wayne Industries) offered to bail his company out in exchange for him giving up control of his company to Bruce. Roman then kinda went loopy, blaming others for his misfortune, mainly Bruce Wayne.

Roman then broke into his parents crypt, got struck by lightning (wow, he really can't catch a break) and carved a mask out of his fathers casket. Donning the mask Roman became the Black Mask. As a crime lord the Black Mask formed the False Face Society, a criminal group made up of Gothams petty criminals. He became pretty powerful, which attracted the attention of the police and of course the Batman. The Black Mask started killing everyone he believed had wronged him in his life. Luckily Batman deduced his real identity and stopped him before he killed Bruce Wayne (or Batman). Black Mask tried to kill Batman in a fire but failed and the flames fused the mask to his face. Bummer.

Don't forget to E-mail topics and questions to ryansblog@yahoo.co.uk