PURPLE MASK
Real Name: Dennis Burton
Identity/Class: Normal human, conventional weapons user (World War II era)
Occupation: Assistant district attorney
Group Membership: None
Affiliations: Commissioner Herrick, William Grant, Frederick Swabert
Enemies: Bellos, Lester Deeks, Renard, Whalen
Known Relatives: None
Aliases: Laughing Mask
Base of Operations: Secret crime laboratory in an unspecified city (near "Rapid Falls"); 1940s era
First Appearance:
(as Laughing Mask) Daring Mystery Comics#2/7 (February, 1940)
(as Purple Mask) Daring Mystery Comics#3/3 (April, 1940)
Powers/Abilities: The Purple Mask has no superhuman abilities, but is strong, a good fighter, and extremely athletic. He frequently uses disguises. He carries automatic handguns and drives a motorcycle. He also often uses his civilian car to trail criminals. When Burton was using the identity of the Laughing Mask, he wore a luminescent full-face mask (and apparently carried a spare to frighten his targets).
History: (Daring Mystery Comics#2/7 (fb)) - Assistant district attorney Dennis Burton, most recent in a line of law enforcers stretching back for generations, became frustrated with the increasing corruption of politicians and others which made it almost impossible to successfully deal with criminals by legal means. Accordingly, he created the identity of the Laughing Mask in order to hunt and kill criminals as a vigilante.
(Daring Mystery Comics#2/7) - In 1940, Burton investigated a local train wreck, and found that the engine's wheels had been intentionally sabotaged with acid. He disguised himself as an oiler and went to check out the railyard, where he saw two men tampering with the trains. Shedding his disguise, he pursued them to their hideout, where he found a large gathering of gangsters under Lester Deeks. He was caught and overpowered, and Deeks had him thrown in the attic. However, he escaped and donned his costume. He cut the lights and lowered a duplicate of his glowing mask into the room to create confusion. Then he exterminated the gangsters and rushed to the trainyard to prevent the sabotage of the next passenger train. He was able to prevent the acid from being applied and stop the train before it reached the Rapid Falls bridge, which had been wired to explode. The Laughing Mask then shot the rest of the thugs, leaving one alive to sign a confession, and left him at the police station.
(Daring Mystery Comics#3/3 (fb) - BTS) - Sometime after this, Burton retired the Laughing Mask name and costume, reinventing himself as the more conventional Purple Mask. The reason for this has not been revealed.
(Daring Mystery Comics#3/3) - Burton and Police Commissioner Herrick learned that businessman Frederick Swabert had recieved a threatening note demanding the location of the secret hiding place of his father's fortune. Swabert explained that his father had distrusted banks, and hid all his money in secret vaults beneath his house, but that he did not know exactly where his father had built them. Burton realized that the plans to Swabert's mansion must have been in a planbook which had recently been stolen from an architect, and confirmed with his friend William Grant of the National Bank that the only one with access to the original book was a man named Renard. As the Purple Mask, he broke into Renard's apartment, and found that Renard and a gangster called Bellos were behind the threats.
The Purple Mask rushed to the mansion just in time to save Swabert from the poison gas issuing from his telephone. He traced the telephone wire to another room of the mansion, where he confronted and shot Bellos. Shortly afterward, the Purple Mask ran into Renard and his men, and a deadly shootout followed. A stray shot triggered a secret door, and Renard and his henchman Blakie dashed through it. They found Swabert's father's fortune in a locked trunk surrounded by an acid-filled moat. The Purple Mask followed them, and in the ensuing fight, Blakie's escape attempt ended with his death in the moat. This was enough for Renard to surrender and make a full confession.
(Daring Mystery Comics#4/1) - Burton happened across a daylight bank robbery, and pursued the robbers to a farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Disguising himself as a farmer, he investigated the farmhouse, overhearing the robbers hiding in the cellar. Quickly donning his Purple Mask costume, he burst in, but was overpowered. The robbers left him behind and drove off in a hurry. When Burton returned to his office, the DA introduced him to Whalen, the president of the First National Bank. Burton followed Whalen's chauffeur, a known criminal, and discovered that he was mixed up with the gang he had followed, and that they were all working for Whalen himself. The next day, when Whalen left town (ostensibly on doctor's orders), Burton boarded the same train. He disguised himself as a waiter at Whalen's hotel, and eavesdropped outside the bank president's room. When they rang for champagne, he came in, then left the room and returned in his Purple Mask costume. He roughed the thugs up, then locked them in the room and went for the police. However, by the time he returned, the gang had escaped through the window. The Purple Mask pursued them and caught them on his motorcycle. Later, as Burton, he returned the money from the bank heist, claiming to have been given it by the Purple Mask.
(Daring Mystery Comics#3/cover) - The Purple Mask eventually went to fight the Nazis in Europe. On one occasion, he single-handedly attacked a bunker from which the Germans planned to fire a rocket in which they had chained a woman.
Comments: Created by Will Harr and Maurice Gutwirth.
No actual connection is made in the stories between the Laughing Mask and the Purple Mask, but they are both Dennis Burton, assistant DA, and they appear in stories by the same creative team in sequential issues of a single comic title, so it can safely be assumed they are the same man. Incidentally, Purple Mask does appear to get somewhat less bloodthirsty as time goes on. Though he gleefully shoots down the pleading, unarmed Deeks in his first appearance, he doesn't kill anyone at all in the third story. Purple Mask's post war history, if any, is unknown.
I'm not sure the Swabert story makes any sense at all, nor do the Mask's farmer and waiter disguises in the Whalen story, but then that's the Golden Age for you.
It seems likely that the National Bank for which William Grant works is the same First National Bank of which Whalen was president.
The chronological placement of the cover of DMC#3 is necessarily arbitrary. Purple Mask could well have taken a trip to Germany and returned to deal with the Whalen case. In fact, it's possible that it takes place between DMC#2 and the story in DMC#3, and even has some connection to Burton's change of identity.
An idea I had to explain Dennis Burton's change in disposition from the bloodthirsty Laughing Mask to the more mild-mannered Purple Mask -- maybe that "laughing mask" was the supernatural creation of some demonic entity (maybe the Demon of the Mask?) as a way to give it an agent in the earthly plane (its own version of the Exemplars) to spread chaos.
When Burton first put on the mask, it took possession of his mind and turned him into a homicidal vigilante. But Burton was concerned with how the mask was affecting his mind, so he was able to overcome the possession with his strong will and his sense of right and justice. He locked the mask away, retiring as the Laughing Mask, but decided to continue on with a crime-fighting career and started afresh with the new identity of the Purple Mask. Thanks to John Kaminski for providing color images from the reprint of Daring Mystery Comics#2/7 from The Twelve#0. Unfortunately, my copies of the DMC stories are black-and-white photocopies from the commercially-available microfiche. The main picture for this profile was made using the scan of DMC#2's cover at The Grand Comics Database Project, but the remainder are quite poor. If anyone has the ability to replace them with better, color images, please contact us. Clarifications:
Purple Mask, formerly the Laughing Mask, has no known connection to Images: Daring Mystery Comics#2/7 (February 1940) - Will Harr (script), Maurice Gutwirth (pencils and inks) Last updated: 06/24/06 Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know. Non-Marvel Copyright
info
--John Kaminski
Full shot (Purple Mask) - Daring Mystery Comics#3, cover
Full shot (Laughing Mask) - Daring Mystery Comics#2/7, p62, panel 1
Head shot (Laughing Mask) - Daring Mystery Comics#2/7, p60, panel 3
Head shot (Unmasked) - Daring Mystery Comics#3/3, p17, panel 4
Head shot (Purple Mask) - Daring Mystery Comics#4/1, p4, panel 4
Daring Mystery Comics#3/3 (April 1940) - Will Harr (script), Maurice Gutwirth (pencils and inks), Alex Schomburg (cover pencils and inks)
Daring Mystery Comics#4/1 (May 1940) - possibly Will Harr (script), Maurice Gutwirth (pencils and inks)
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