ZORRO: SCARS #1
Written by Don McGregor and Drawn by Sidney Lima
Published by Papercutz/NBM

The masked swordsman returns to comics, and I wish I could get a bit more excited about it.

I’ve always enjoyed the character of Zorro a great deal. I’m a sucker for good guys who use a sword, and as a big believer in character diversity, Zorro’s one of the most important characters to ever grace the comic book page. This adventure gets off to a good start, plot-wise: Zorro is on the run with a waitress who intervened on his behalf and saved his life during a fight. Some very bad men are pursuing them, and they’ve reached the Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone as the book begins. Immediately, you have an unusual location with nifty perils for an action story. You have a pretty girl. And then the titular hero and his female companion run into another pair on the run and get involved with their fate. As I said, plot-wise, we’re good. It isn’t reinventing the wheel, but that’s not necessary for a Zorro story.

Sidney Lima’s art is quite lovely. He brings an interesting Ameri-manga look to the book, and I was surprised at how well it fit the tone of the story. I’ve never seen his stuff before, but I’m a believer. He’ll do fine in this business as long as he keeps improving.

Nope, the problem here isn’t with the story or the art. The problem is with the script.

True confessions: I’ve been reading comics for a long time, and I can’t remember reading a single Don McGregor script that didn’t drive me completely bonkers. This guy overwrites to the point that he makes the classic work of guys like Bill Mantlo read as terse by comparison. For whatever reason, McGregor’s work always reads like he doesn’t trust his artists to effectively tell his story. And when they do, rather than going back and cutting chunks of wooden expository dialogue, he leaves it intact, and it just lays there like he slipped it a roofie.

I respect that McGregor knows the character more than any other living writer, and he’s contributed some amazing pieces to the Zorro mythos. But I just wish he’d rein himself in. Let the story tell itself. Give the script some Pepto Bismol and stem the flow of over-written dialogue. The story itself and the art are pretty good. Trust, my boy. Trust. Grade: B-

SIBAM?!

Should it? It’s going to be! This Fall, Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are back on the screen in THE LEGEND OF ZORRO, a sequel to THE MASK OF ZORRO. The trailer is available at Yahoo. Check it out.

FLIGHT VOL. 2
Written and Drawn by Various
Published by Image Comics

NEGATIVE BURN. FOUR LETTER WORLDS. FLIGHT.

Raise your hand if you thought Image would ever be the publisher of the best anthologies being produced in comics today.

You in the back: put your hand down. You’re lying.

Damn, is this book beautiful. Editor and art director Kazu Kibuishi (creator of the awesome DAISY KUTTER) has gone out and found another set of phenomenal artists for FLIGHT, and I am amazed at the results. FLIGHT is an artistically driven enterprise; while the book’s title is a suggestible theme for a contribution, the artists aren’t held to that. What we get are a stunning spectrum of pieces, ranging from tales of a trolley that travels through the lands of the dead to a story about a robot encouraged to dream by a passing bird.

Is every story an Eisner-level bit of brilliance? No. Is every artist a modern Moebius? No. But the success rate for artists and stories tops well over 90% is each category. When you’re discussing a 400+ page book with thirty-three stories, that’s nearly beyond belief.

It’s no coincidence that Image’s entry for Free Comic Book Day this year was a FLIGHT primer that contained a story from this book and one from volume one. What an amazing book to show new comics readers.

For decades, quality anthologies were the purview of the superior alternative comics publishers like Fantagraphics and Top Shelf. The big publishers were almost terrified of publishing anthologies and seemingly didn’t know how. Clearly, that era has passed. I can’t wait for volume three. Grade: A

HELLO, AGAIN
Written and Drawn by Max Estes
Published by Top Shelf

This is a clever little tale that’s sort of a modern take on “The Tell-Tale Heart.” William is a decent chap; he works a building superintendent, has a passable relationship with his mother, and is sweet and reasonable.

On the other hand, he’s sleeping with his best friend’s fiancée.

Nobody’s perfect.

However, being a fundamentally decent sort, Willy’s conscience rears its ugly head in an unusual way. As a youth, he and some friends untied a boat from a local dock. The boat contained its drunk and passed out owner, a man who was considered lost at sea and dead. The fisherman manifests himself from a hole in the ground in front of Willy’s building, and he’s not going to leave until Willy gets his shit together, stops being an asshole, and starts down the road to redeeming himself for his misdeeds.

Estes’ simple art is deceptive in how it presents Willy. Drawn with few lines, as the story progresses and the fisherman gets deeper inside his guilty mind, Willy begins to look different to the reader’s eye, more scratchy. It isn’t until the climax when he comes back into focus. Good stuff. Not the most earth-shattering book you’ll read this year, but entertaining and nicely put together. My interest was held and I found myself drawn to Willy’s plight. Grade: B+

TOZZER 2 #1-4
Written by Ron Dunlop and Drawn by Peter Lumby
Published by Ablaze Media

TOZZER is… TOZZER is…

TOZZER is fifteen pounds of “What the fuck?” in a five-pound bag. That’s the only way I can describe it.

Okay, let me see if I can lay this out for you: Tozzer is a young amateur magician growing up in a trailer park called Shit Creek. He’s the foster child of a lesbian couple named Butch and Jodie, and he hangs out with his love interest Hornie, his friend Rod, and a talking doll named Fucky.

If you suddenly just asked yourself if TOZZER was created by a Briton, you guessed right.

Anyway, Tozzer and company have enrolled at the Boarboils School Of Drama in Hollywood in the hopes of being stars someday. But in the meantime, they’ll have to deal with satirical pastiches of Sam Jackson’s PULP FICTION character Jules (armed with a foul-mouthed Yoda-esque arm puppet: “Fuck the what?”; a George Lucas riff: filmmaker Luke Gorgeous (who is cut down by a sniper); a Michael Moore stand-in (who is so fat he gets stuck in a phone booth while trying to steal a pizza); and campus staff who are parodies of THE MATRIX, including headmaster Morphine. There’s also a pedophile pop-star named Mad Jax who wants to enroll at the school so he can fuck Tozzer in the ass; an FBI agent that’s a Vin Diesel take whom the students can only understand when they read his interpreted subtitles at the bottom of the panel; an Eminem-esque rapper student who has it in for Tozzer but can’t kick his ass without trying to out-rap him first; and a backup story that satirizes the Jackson Five itself.

Good God. I’ve only scratched the surface.

After I got past issue two of this, I threw up my hands and just decided to go with it. I’m not sure if I can tell you if it’s actually any good or not. I couldn’t tell if Dunlop was trying to satirize Americana, or if he just likes poking fun at self-referential entertainment as a genre. Like films in the AIRPLANE! vein, the book throws so many jokes at you, you have to surrender or put it down and run. For what it’s worth, I laughed and chuckled at many things, I kept reading, and was mildly annoyed that the publisher didn’t wait until issue five (the finale) was out to send the package. Your mileage will very much vary. Grade: Umm…

See you in seven.

Review materials may be sent to: Marc Mason, P.O. Box 26732, Tempe, AZ 85285. You can also find me at Happy Nonsense and The Comics Waiting Room

E-MAIL THE AUTHOR | ARCHIVES