MASK

The puzzle-solving kid superheroes from Cape (2019) team up with real-life World War II heroines.

Josie and her friends Mae and Akiko have secret identities: the Emerald Shield, the Violet Vortex, and the Orange Inferno. The three comics-loving girls now have superpowers and a superhero mentor, but the war is still endangering them all. Now Akiko’s mom has gone missing from the Manzanar internment camp, but they don’t have time to focus on that. San Francisco’s being attacked by Side-Splitter and his army of evil clown clones. Pitch-perfect action scenes right out of golden-age comics—“Curses on you, Infinite Irritants!” wails Side-Splitter, as his red-nosed, floppy-shoed clowns attack—are complemented by sequences illustrated in comics-panel form. As white, Irish American Josie, African American Mae, and Japanese American Akiko receive help from some of the war’s real-life female cryptographers and spies, they solve numerous puzzles, including Morse code, acrostics, and a cryptic message that reads “∞ ∆ |^^| ≈ |º|.” Most of the puzzles are presented with enough information to be cracked by interested readers, as well. Historical racism and segregation are absent except for the internment camps, but the contrast between the injustice of the internment camps and the patriotic sacrifice of the deported internees is front and center.

A winning blend of comedy, superheroics, inspirational women from history, and puzzle-solving.