Masque

Masque Masque’s first reaction to the X-Men in Uncanny X-Men #169 centers on their appearance. While Sunder wonders whether the intruders are mutants, Masque focuses on their beauty. The difference he sees between their bodies and his own immediately shapes the hostility he brings to the encounter. His mutation allows him to reshape other people’s faces and bodies. At this point, he cannot use that power to alter himself. That limitation gives his resentment a specific source: he can change the very features he envies in someone else while remaining unable to change his own. In #170, Masque approaches the captive, feverish Storm and begins transforming her face. Nightcrawler protests that she deserves dignity. Masque responds by showing his own face and questioning how much dignity people have ever allowed him. The scene connects his experience of rejection to the harm he chooses to inflict. Callisto eventually orders him to leave Nightcrawler alone, demonstrating that Masque’s behavior still answers to her authority. Within the community’s first story, he turns appearance into a means of punishment and control. My take: I want to be completely honest: Masque is one of the characters that I absolutely hate the most. It's not just a dislike. I hate Masque, and I don't even know why. It could be because he's hideous and he thinks he's better than everybody, and it could just be that he's a piece of shit. I think one of the reasons why I hate him the most is there's a severe lack of penalties for everything he's done as a character. If you look at any of the characters who were originally bad, villains of any sort, most of them pay dearly for being a villain at some point or another. I like some villains more than others. But Masque has continuously gotten away with one thing after another over a long period of time. Even what he did to Callisto, visually, he's just a piece of shit, and he's one of the characters that I absolutely hate the most. Absolutely hate him the most. I don't like him at all. I was really happy that one time Colossus slammed his face into the wall, and I wished Colossus would have beat him senseless, but unfortunately we didn't get the pleasure of seeing that. I'm still kind of reading through that storyline. At the point where I'm at now, he's still buried deep in the sewers doing his thing. He was going unchecked until Colossus basically put him in check, and he backed off a good bit. But I really want to see him pay dearly, and hopefully that eventually happens in the series. We'll see.