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.

Django Unchained #1 (Vertigo)

writer: Quentin Tarantino
artist: R.M. Guera

(via vertigocomics.com)

I have not yet seen Django Unchained the movie (though rest assured when I do I will probably enjoy it, as Tarantino is a favorite).  Reading this comic, which adapts the complete script regardless of what actually made it into the film, then becomes my first experience with it.

Apart from anything that can be said about the story, it suddenly occurs to me what sets Quentin Tarantino apart from other filmmakers.  Plenty has been made about his influences from watching and obsessing over other movies, but the aspect I will choose to emphasize here is his writing.  Actually, it may be more obvious reading him in comic book form than watching him in his movies that Tarantino approaches his storytelling very much as a storyteller.  I'm not talking about the nonlinear way he presented Pulp Fiction, but simply in the way he crafts scenes in general, the way he progresses his narratives, even when you're talking about a lengthy dialogue scene like the opening act of Inglourious Basterds, when Lanza reveals how he's come to know what the French farmer refuses to admit outright, that he's hiding a family of Jews under the floorboards.  (If by some chance you've never watched a Tarantino movie, much less that one, it's perhaps the best possible way to enjoy his craft.)

As I said, that becomes apparent when reading this comic.  I figure I will try my best to read the rest of the mini-series adaptation, as it now seems just as relevant as seeing the movie itself.

Interestingly, by complete coincidence I was able to enjoy the first comics work from Tarantino and artist R.M. Guera (best known for his exceptional work in Jason Aaron's Scalped) when they first collaborated for some "deleted scenes" first published in Playboy (see? it really is possible to read Playboy!) from Basterds.  Perhaps at some point it will be liberated from its obscurity, included in some special edition of that film or something.  (Feel free to tell me if this has already happened.)

My advice, then, is to enjoy the movie and this adaptation, too, because it will be well worth your time.