Tony Hawk's Pro Reaper

I can just picture this thing riding a skateboard, doing some gnarly grinds before dismounting and sitting down to drink a nice cool IPA while blasting ska out of the boombox he had resting on his shoulders. Because that's just the feeling this image gives me. This guy is a cool guy. A cool reaper, specifically, who skateboards. He's what we 90s kids call a "totally radical dude with tons of 'tude". I know, I know, all slang across all generations is ridiculous, but at least old slang were actual words, so. Just look at that grin on his face, he's not lookin' to harsh your buzz, dawg, he just wants to have a good time, maybe steal away a soul or two. All in a days work for a guy who's name I'm gonna say is, like, Randy or something.

We've covered some eerie death type masks here in the past, and we've covered demonic looking creatures as well, but rarely do they come together, and in such a way that works, that makes them really worth discussing. But Randy here is the exception, and for very good reason, because just look at this little fuckers face. If this thing approached me on my deathbed, as I clung to life (for some reason I can't fathom because life fucking sucks), and told me it was time to go, I'd happily go with him! He could let me climb on his back and then we'd fuckin' kickflip into infinity. But in all seriousness, he has a face that's just charming as heck, and extremely well designed. The slight little fleshy bits carved into the skull, mostly around his jaw and that horn, are a perfect example of less is more. Had they overdone that, had they made him more flesh than bone, then it wouldn't look nearly as cool. Simplicity has its places, people.

And then, to put him in a cool black hood, so you know that he's a real cool dude, that was just a brilliant decision as well. His eyes don't look menacing, his teeth are sharp looking, sure, but not in a 'I'm gonna gnaw the flesh from your bones' sort of way but more a 'I'll use my teeth to rip open this bag of chips for us, brah' kind of way. And I love his little overbite in the front, under his nose. Gives him almost a more animalistic sense of self. Plus the red of that tongue, the little curve the tongue makes, is just subtle enough to give the bonewhite face some flair. This is a mask crafted by someone with a very specific idea in mind, and done expertly, might I add.

So why does this mask work when so many others like it do not? Well, there's a number of theories. Let's start with the fact that there's a sheer overwhelming amount of masks just like this out there. I know, because since I constantly search for new masks to cover on this blog, I wind up seeing a lot of them. Sure, the reaper concept is an old staple, and the skeletal reaper is a newer cooler staple, and variation, on that old staple, but for some reason most of them just don't work and I think the reason for that - near as I can figure, anyway - is simple because the skeletal part is usually just exactly that. It's a human face that looks like a skull. And that's what makes Randy here so fucking cool, is he's like something off a satanic album cover.

So rarely do things in the mainstream, be they masks, movies, whatever, utilize the "otherworldly animal" style of skull. There's just something eerie about a cow skull, man. Something almost primal, that makes me feel even more unsafe than just a boring ol' skeleton coming at me. That's why Randy succeeds, because they tapped into that and ran with it. Now, I've seen a few other masks try this very same thing, but none of them ever really got the same reaction Randy got out of me, and I think the reason is because they try and make them look scary. Randy doesn't look scary. He looks like he's gonna get some friends together in his beat up jalopy and drive you to the Warped Tour. He's got an undeniable charm, a joyous almost ecstatic grin on his face, and it just makes him so much more darn likeable. I'll take goofy happy skeletons any day over plain boring skeletons, or, even worse, super scary skeletons. They're already bone, you don't need to make them any scarier. A skeleton is inherently creepy because its basic existence reminds us of our own upcoming mortality. That inescapable dread of the one thing we cannot avoid...death. So yeah, gimme happy, demon like skeletons any day of the week.

I mean, just look at that grin. How can you be scared of that grin? That's the grin of a guy who just wants to kick back and watch some X Games.

Maybe I'm partial to it though because I grew up around skateboarders. Between my stepbrother and his friends, and just the era I grew up in, I was around skate culture a lot. I don't like skating, I can't skate, but I would be lying if I didn't admit that the people generally involved in said community (at least the one I was around) were not some of the nicest funniest folks I've ever known. And maybe that's why I took a shine to Randy that others may not. Others may look at this mask and wonder why I think it's so cool, and why I certainly did run down the gamut of reasons for you, they're my reasons, and you're free to think up your own. You're free to hate Randy, even, and that's okay. Lots of people do. He's kissing all your girlfriends and tagging your dads laundromat all the time. I get it, he can be kind of an irritant. But he's MY irritant, dammit. I do think he's just got a great design. There's nothing I can see wrong with him. Even with a lot of the masks I cover here, I generally notice one or two things out of place, one or two things I think should've been done differently to make it better.

But Randy? Randy is the rare exception. Randy is the fine example of a mask done perfectly from the get go. There isn't a single thing about this guy I would change, except maybe make him real, because who wouldn't want a skateboard riding, soda guzzling, rock music blasting animal skull headed reaper for a best friend? I know I would.

I wouldn't need any other friends.