Django/Zorro #7 (Dynamite)

writer: Matt Wagner

artist: Esteve Polls

Well, I think Matt Wagner nailed the ending.  Going into a project where he was not only continuing his own work on Zorro but creating the first sequel to a Quentin Tarantino film, this was something he needed to do.  Django Unchained is a lot of things, but first and foremost it's a surprisingly moral experience, turning in one spectacular moment into a character's outrage at the conclusions the villain has not only reached but callously shared as if there wouldn't be consequences.  Wagner goes a slightly different route, but it's Zorro's awakening of Django's moral outrage that informs this story's conclusion.  As Django himself observes on the final page: "Diego de la Vega...alias El Zorro -- without a doubt, the most peculiar white man I have ever met.  And, brother...that's sayin' somethin'!"  And Wagner completely earns that statement.

It might seem a little pat to have Django realize that black slaves were not the only minorities being mistreated, because after all, championing black slaves, black Americans at all, would certainly have been mission enough, and in Zorro's own adventures, a limited scope always seemed to be enough.  But Wagner's conclusion is that perhaps Zorro had been limiting himself for too long, basking in comforts that have now become to feel uncomfortable.  And so yes, Wagner achieves victory with both characters.  How often does a crossover achieve that?

And this is something that has been building all along, mind you, but to see all the pieces come together, to even have the villain taken out, ultimately, by someone other than Zorro or Django, is entirely pleasing to experience.  It reminds me all over again why I read Wagner's Zorro in the first place, and even the expansive potential of Django, a character Tarantino himself borrowed from others.  Zorro is a character of the frontier.  This is a story that brought him closer to home.  And as such, helped do the reverse for Django.  And perhaps, helped enrich both for future adventures.

Digitally Speaking...48

Digitally Speaking...covers comics I've read from my comiXology account...

CBLDF Defender #1 (Creator Owned)
From April 2015.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund takes comics seriously, as in they champion creator rights, and the right for readers to have access to comic book material.  It's basically the comic book version of the inexplicable banned book phenomenon.  Banned books, as in the concept of allowing ninnies to censor what you're allowed to access.  Mostly this takes place at schools and libraries, which means the very institutions intended for society to build itself up are in fact breeding ground for people to tear each other's potential down.  This strikes me as wrong.  This debut issue of a journal detailing CBLDF's activities and relevant discussions such as Neil Gaiman's experiences (via an interview) and the Charlie Hebdo controversy (in which one culture violently attempts to tell another what is acceptable, and the other responds with cartoon drawings) is pretty dry.  Usually the Defense Fund enlists industry veterans to make actual comic book material out of the discussion first begun with Seduction of the Innocent (also covered in the issue, by the way), but for whatever reason chose not to do so here.  Insightful material, but could use more innovative analysis.  Personally, using more examples of challenged material would be more interesting.  An excerpt from Persepolis is almost completely unreadable in even the greatest enlargement, which only enhances the size of the pixels.  Alas, comiXology's Guided View is useless in this instance.

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear #1 (Marvel)
From 1993.

This issue begins Frank Miller's origin of Daredevil alongside artist John Romita, Jr.  This was years after Miller's famous work on the character, and it shows, how well he knows Matt Murdock, calling back to mind things Miller had done previously.  By the end of the issue, Matt's father has refused to throw a fight (this is depicted in the movie released a decade later) and been murdered for it, following Matt's blinding and subsequent training under Stick, although his interest in the law and even nickname "Daredevil" is presented as predating all of this.  Romita has a distinctive style that is already in full evidence, pretty much exactly as seen in his current Superman work.  Perhaps tellingly, it looks much like Tim Sale's work.  And hey! speaking of which...

Daredevil: Yellow #1 (Marvel)
From 2001.

After years of telling Batman stories together, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale went over to Marvel and started a series of character sketches there, too.  Their Daredevil read a lot like Frank Miller's, and looked like it, too.  Probably not a coincidence.  Miller's work paved the way for Loeb, who always seemed to have an instinct for superhero psychology and an intuitive grasp of their personal narratives.  Later he'd bring this to his greatest success, Superman/Batman, which began life as a series of dueling monologues straight out of the work he'd done in Batman: The Long Halloween and Daredevil: Yellow, among others.  Yellow is another origin story, and the first issue covers the same fateful sequence concerning Matt's father as detailed above.  Yet repetition, as always, creates resonance, especially when covered by expert hands.  One master to another...

The Defense Fund could find a lot of illustrations in Matt Murdock's story.  Miller depicts the formative days of the boy who would become Daredevil as full of delinquency and fallen heroes.  Yet this only serves to create the man who would become a hero best known for never giving up.  Surely a message worth spreading?  Comic book fans, especially superhero fans of the Marvel persuasion, are always arguing that this is a medium that celebrates triumph over adversity.  Isn't that the CBLDF mission statement?

Django/Zorro #5 (Dynamite)
From 2015.

Django/Zorro, and Grant Morrison's Annihilator, became the first time I read a comic book first-run digitally.  I haven't made that clear until now.  My local comics shop is supposed to have the series (both of them, actually) pulled for me, but then, the guys who run this store are always screwing up.  So I didn't even realize I hadn't read this particular issue yet until I checked in on my comiXology account.  I don't always have time to read the material there, which is why my alphabetical journey through it has taken such a long time.  As it turns out, this is the issue of Django/Zorro I've been waiting for all along, the moment the Quentin Tarantino in the story really pops.  Not just because the late Dr. King Schultz makes a cameo, or that Don Diego de la Vega (a.k.a. Zorro) pulls off the same trick Schultz does in Django Unchained concerning revealing the identity of someone he has a bounty on, or that gunfire irrupts abruptly.  Okay, maybe a combination of all these is enough.  It's the first time Matt Wagner seems interested in more than a superficial juxtaposition.  Here he's making a clear effort to evoke not just the spirit of Tarantino's movie but its feel as well.  And this is a good thing.

(I've also added Descender to my subscriptions.  Where will I strike next???)

Django/Zorro #6 (Dynamite)

writer: Matt Wagner

artist: Esteve Polls

I've been waiting six issues now for a true Quentin Tarantino moment.  There's one more issue to go.  Should I expect one then?  And will that be what signifies this as a satisfying experience?

These are the important questions concerning Django/Zorro.  As I've remarked previously, this is otherwise an extension of Matt Wagner's prior Zorro comics, which is not at all a bad thing.  But it's also a "sequel" to Tarantino's Django Unchained, and as such there are certain expectations.  Such as, if Tarantino's Django is to return at all, should it be in a story that has a true Tarantino ring about it?  Wagner has gone out of his way to echo Django Unchained itself, but is that enough?  Furthermore, Django has found himself in a situation where he has found another group of people being exploited as abused.  Is that enough?  Is that the true legacy of the character, being an avenger in much the way as, well, Zorro?

I leave this review filled with questions.  The answers may or may not be found in the final issue...

Quick Hits February 2015

Batman and Robin #39 (DC)

Still trying to adjust to the impending status change to Gleason's solo Robin, Son of Batman.  But this was a fun, and far less emotionally heavy issue from the waning days of the Tomasi era.  Damian and Billy Batson.  Need.  To.  Have.  Their own.  Series.

Django/Zorro #4 (Dynamite) 

Wagner has slowly brought Django into the narrative.  Now we're seeing how he fits in to Zorro's grand Arizona adventure.

G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes, Agent of Cobra #2 (IDW) 

Well, now Costa ain't even pretending this is not a direct continuation of his previous Cobra saga.  This is a good thing.

Justice League #39 (DC) 

A rather abrupt end to "The Amazo Virus."  Ever since Citizen Cold, I've been thinking Leonard Snart could easily use a bigger spotlight.  This issue continues that.

Ms. Marvel #12 (Marvel) 

The Loki issue.  Honestly, I've started cooling on this series.

The Multiversity: Mastermen (DC) 

Morrison and Lee keep the Multiversity in high gear.

Red Lanterns #39 (DC) 

Walker is slightly less impressive in his second issue, but is still on-point.

Thor Annual #1 (Marvel) 

CM Punk's story is hilarious, and hilariously aided by Chew artist Rob Guillory.  It's also surprising to see a Raphael Albuquerque cover on a Marvel comic.

And an older issue:

Justice League #23.4 (DC) 

Featuring a direct Forever Evil tie-in and another Flashpoint link-of-sorts.

Django/Zorro #3 (Dynamite)

writer: Matt Wagner, Quentin Tarantino

artist: Esteve Polls

In the third issue of this mash-up, Matt Wagner gets around to explaining how exactly this counts as a sequel to Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained.  At the end of the film, Django has been happily reunited with the love of his life and can live his life as he pleases (he chooses to continue on as a bounty hunter).  Where is Hildy now?  Django explains that she's off assisting the underground railroad.

Slightly more relevant to the story is the list of investors (hearing them explain their culinary differences is a highlight) to the villain's evil scheme [insert evil scheme here] including Spartacus LeQuint, owner of the mining company Django escapes from at the end of the movie.

At the end of the issue is Django's first official meeting with Zorro.  Well, "meeting" insofar as Django watches the Fox put the fear of the letter "z" into LeQuint.  As Zorro does, quite literally...

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.