Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Character Spotlight: Richard Sionis

As I mentioned last week, I love when researching a canon immigrant helps me find another one. And just like last week, I found this one while reading up on Gotham's Bridgit Pike.

Richard Sionis is another of Gotham's many characters where it's hard to tell if they're supposed to be a prototype for a more established character or simply a loosely adapted version of an established character. The established character in question is Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask, a businessman/gang leader who wears a black skull mask when he does crime.


Richard Sionis, who first appeared in the season one episode "The Mask" (November 2014), is a businessman who liked masks and inadvertently caused some deaths through a strange ritual where he would make new hires to his company fight each other. Although the deaths weren't intentional, Sionis didn't seem to concerned about them and covered them up. When Detective Gordon came to his business to investigate, Sionis tried to get some of his employees to kill him, and when that didn't work, he donned a black kabuki mask and tried to kill Gordon himself. He eventually ended up in Arkham Asylum for his trouble.


A couple years later, Richard Sionis appeared in Catwoman #51 (April 2016) as the father of Black Mask and the founder of the False Face Society, a role that previously belonged to Black Mask. He went by "The Mask", just like the name of the episode, and as you can see, he also favored Japanese masks.


What's strange about this is that Black Mask already had a father in the comics - Charles Sionis. They could've just made Richard his uncle or something, but DC has never been accused of caring too much about continuity, especially in the last couple of years.

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