After seeing this was the pick of the week I stopped by the comic shop and purchased it, so I wouldn't be left out of the podcast discussion. Boy am I regretting that decision. This is possibly the first time that I that I completely and totally disagreed over what the boys have picked as the comic of the week.
The recent resurgence of western comics has put me in a blissful state of mind and I could recommend several comics that takes the reader back to the old west. Unfortunately, Zorro isn't one of them because it seems it is just trying to cash in on the comeback of the genre and just isn't very good. The great Matt Wagner falls short in the story telling department and seems to meander around without really making me interested. The main problem is that the dialogue seems contrived and at a few points even takes the reader completely out of the story as there is no way anyone actually speaks like Wagner writes. I think the main problem with the writing is that Wagner just tries to do to much in one issue. The origin of Zorro is pretty well known, but Wagner still should have taken the time to flesh out the character and made us actually care. It's a tall order to be sure, but a skillful writer can make us fall in love with a character with just a few words, unfortunately Wagner just didn't accomplish this.
Western comic should have a very distinct art style that Francesco Francavilla didn't pull off very well. The pencils, while serviceable aren't as much as a problem as the color. The old west is full of lush oranges, golds, and browns and yet this book just screams blah and bland. The colorist, Adriano Lucas, seems to never have seen a western sunset before. His skies go from being a hot pink tone to burnt orange in just one panel and then back to another crappy pink. Western sunsets should eb and flow like the tide, not click from one color to the next like a two year old changing television channels. Black and white might have actually served this book better than Lucas's horrible colors.
The one redeeming quality of the book, as Conor pointed out, is that it brings Hispanic culture to comics and anytime a part of the population that is almost completely ignored in comics gets representation it has to be a good thing. Sadly, I don't feel that this book is the best representative of Hispanic culture, as it takes what has, in my mind anyway, been a Spanish character and injects an Tongva mother. This seems like a horrible way to bring the mysticism of the old west to an otherwise interesting character and seems completely unnecessary and waters down the Hispanic culture that would have been more than enough to sustain the interest in this book. Unfortunately, my interest in this book faded as soon as I closed the cover and I couldn't care less about what happens next.
Conor got this one completely wrong.
Story: 2 - Average
Art: 1 - Poor
