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News · 2026-09-26

Fadime Yildirim has six M.A.S.K. covers coming, and the first three hang each driver's own vehicle off a keyring

By gijoe.army news desk

Fadime Yildirim has six M.A.S.K. covers coming, and the first three hang each driver's own vehicle off a keyring

Put a comics character in streetwear and the clothes are usually all there is to it. On the three M.A.S.K. covers Fadime Yildirim has published so far the clothes are the least of it, and the part worth looking at is hanging off the character’s hand.

Skybound, Image Comics and Hasbro announced a run of six variant covers by Yildirim, starting with M.A.S.K. #7 and continuing through #12, each one the Cover D slot at a 1-in-25 retailer incentive. The first lands on Wednesday, December 2, at $3.99, with Dan Watters writing, Pye Parr on art, Pierluigi Casolino on colours and Rus Wooton lettering. Skybound’s release describes them as “expertly styled variant covers each featuring a member of the M.A.S.K. network with unique, customized keychains”. The clothes part of that is accurate, but it badly undersells the keychains [1].

Skybound ran this programme on the Joe book first. In May it put Yildirim on G.I. Joe #25 and the five issues after it, through to #30, in the same Cover D slot at the same 1-in-25 ratio, and the announcement it sent out then and the one it sent out today are near enough the same paragraph with the nouns swapped. That Joe run has two issues left in it, so December puts her on two Energon Universe books a fortnight apart: M.A.S.K. #7 on the 2nd, and G.I. Joe #29 on the 16th.

Every charm is that driver’s own vehicle

Four things hang off each of the three rings: an initial, a car key on a ball chain, a lanyard badge printed with that driver’s mask and their first name, and one miniature vehicle. Three of those four would hang off anybody’s keyring; the fourth is specific to the person holding it. Vanessa Warfield has issue 7, and her charm is a purple car: the Manta she stands in front of on Cedric Poulat’s cover for issue 1. Matt Trakker has issue 8 and a red car with lightning flashes down the flank, and the Thunderhawk he drives in the opening pages of issue 1 is an antique an Army officer spends a panel refusing to believe can go that fast. Sly Rax has issue 9 and a purple motorcycle, and Rax spends a chunk of that same first issue dangling an interrogation subject off the side of his Piranha!

The 1:25 incentive covers for M.A.S.K. issues 8 and 9, Matt Trakker and Sly Rax in streetwear, each holding a keychain carrying a mask badge and a vehicle charm

Covers D for issues 8 and 9. Art: Fadime Yildirim, via Skybound and Image Comics.

A Joe can be dressed and still carry the thing he is known for, because a sword or a rifle goes on a person. A M.A.S.K. driver cannot, because the thing he is known for is a car, and short of parking it behind him the only way to put it in his hand is to shrink it onto a keyring. The mask stamped on each badge belongs to its owner too, down to the colour of the visor.

What else is on issue 7

Eight covers are going on the book, and the Yildirim variant is only one of them. Parr takes the main. Nick Bradshaw with Jim Charalampidis, and Derek Charm, have the two open-to-order variants, Satoshi Shiki has the 1:50 out of the Energon Universe manga block we went through in September, Arist Deyn has a 1:100 foil, and a blank sketch cover goes to the convention queue. The eighth is the one to ask for, a T-BOB die cut mask cover by Parr with Luke Preese and Andres Juarez, and Andrea Milana pulled the same trick with a Zartan mask on G.I. Joe #25.

Skybound’s release calls #7 the start of a new story arc, and the solicitation goes straight back to the thread issue 1 left hanging. “T-BOB…WHAT IS YOUR FUNCTION?” it opens, then: “M.A.S.K. and V.E.N.O.M., no one may trust Matt Trakker ever again. Can he prove he’s fit to lead the M.A.S.K. network?” The copy on issue 1, catalogued at MyComicShop, ends on the same worry in almost the same words, asking whether Trakker’s own secrets will jeopardise the entire mission, so whatever the answer turned out to be, #7 begins on the other side of it.

Getting hold of it

MyComicShop is not taking orders on issue 7 yet, so the run behind it is what you can actually buy today, and four of those six issues are sitting there. Issue 4, the newest to reach a shelf, is in on all three of its covers at $3.99. Issues 2 and 3 are in as well, at $3.99 in near mint and $3.10 in very fine; issue 1 is there at $4.99 as a third printing, the issue having gone to four printings in roughly three months. Issues 5 and 6 are out of stock on every cover they carry, so a run bought today arrives with a hole in the middle of it.

If the 1:25 is the one you want, the back issues on this title say roughly what that costs. Issue 1’s incentive variant is listed at $8.99, issue 2’s at the same, and issue 4’s at $5.59. A 1-in-25 is allocated one to a shop for every twenty-five copies it orders, so December’s is worth mentioning to your shop now rather than in December.

Footnotes

  1. Two of the three drivers on those covers are not in the M.A.S.K. network at all. Vanessa Warfield and Sly Rax both answer to Miles Mayhem and the book files them under V.E.N.O.M. alongside him, while Trakker, Gloria Baker and Bruce Sato hold the M.A.S.K. side. Yildirim gives the V.E.N.O.M. pair their own vehicles and their own masks, in the same detail she gives Trakker his, and a set that only dressed the heroes would have been half the set.
  2. The two slates are not identical, and the difference is in the finishes rather than the artists. G.I. Joe #25 was an extra-sized landmark at $4.99 and carried two blank sketch covers plus a foil edition of Tom Reilly’s main cover; M.A.S.K. #7 is a standard-sized $3.99 issue with one blank and no foil edition of Parr’s main, though it still has Arist Deyn’s 1:100 foil incentive.

Sources

Cover art: Fadime Yildirim, via Skybound Entertainment and Image Comics.

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