Reading Comics 141 "Django/Zorro"

via Indie Wire

When Matt Wagner first began doing Zorro comics for Dynamite, in 2008, I saw for the first time a classic pulp character masterfully resurrected in comics.  Wagner was certainly no stranger to the medium at the time, having already crafted his own legacy with creations like Grendel and Mage.  Outside of DC and Marvel, the effort to create distinctive comics with established characters has been a constant goal for publishers over the past thirty years.  Some have tried to come up with their own creations, others have grabbed at the many existing properties that drift through the hands of whoever has paid up to have them for that given moment.  Wagner's Zorro was a perfect confluence.  Of course, I was already a sucker for the Zorro character after an equally inspired 1998 film revival starring Antonio Banderas, The Mask of Zorro, yet Wagner had an equally fine grasp of the concept.  It's rare enough when known superheroes like Batman and Spider-Man find ideal creators to breathe new life into their adventures, rarer still for anyone who has to wait much further in between them for a shot at continued vitality.

In 2012, Quentin Tarantino released Django Unchained, a bombastic twist on the Western genre, aside from everything else that can be said about it.  I became familiar with it, initially, in Vertigo's adaptation, however.  It was another perfect fit.

To see Wagner's Zorro and Tarantino's Django come together is a fever dream beyond my wildest dreams.  Having read the first two issues, I can say that it definitely lives up to its potential.  The first issue heavily draws on the basic framework of Django Unchained, a foreigner traveling across America who happens to come across Django and from thence their journeys join together.  The clever thing Wagner does (he works from a story he and Tarantino hammered out together) is that he has aged Zorro to a ripe old age, probably older than Schultz in Tarantino's film but otherwise comparable enough so that Django can't help but notice the similarities between two remarkable individuals he's had the good fortune to meet.  Django himself is working as a bounty hunter, so this is very much a sequel to Unchained or at least part of his continued adventures.  Reading Wagner's dialogue for Diego de la Vega (Zorro, naturally), he's reminiscent of Schultz to a remarkable degree while remaining his own man.  This is a fantasy team-up that is very much aware that it follows a legacy, and doesn't just happen for crass appeal.

The second issue harkens back to Wagner's original Zorro comics, as it paints a portrait of the menace our two heroes are on their way to confront.  This is a comic that can literally be enjoyed by fans of Tarantino's movie and Wagner's prior work, and it can also be appreciated on its own merits.  It's worth noting that of course there have been many other Zorro stories besides, and Django existed before Tarantino as well.  Django/Zorro continues many traditions admirably.