Running Off The Rails

Zorro Rides Again 7-12
Dynamite Entertainment
Matt Wagner, writer
John K. Snyder III, artist

I reviewed the first half of this 12-issue series here and gave it high praise indeed. This was a wonderfully written narrative that served to weave together elements from many of the previous film, television and comic versions of the Spanish hero of Alta California, while still feeling like a natural progression from Wagner's earlier Zorro series for Dynamite. And the writing was beautifully complemented by the art team -- penciler, inker and colorist. This series was truly a joy to read and enjoy!

Was.

I don't know why a switch was made in the art team for the second half of the series, but there was, and the new artist does not compare favorably with Esteve Polls. Most of the figures are still recognizable, but the art is nowhere near as clean and polished as it was in the first half.

The coloring, too, pales by comparison. Where the first half of the series was lavishly colored in desert tones, many of these pages are colored monochromatically.

I'm afraid I can't lay all of the blame for the drop in quality at the artist's feet. Wagner's writing seems a bit off for the second half of this narrative. Diego de la Vega seemed to have a definite plan of action he was pursuing as Zorro in the first half of this series, and many of his actions stemmed from events depicted in Wagner's earlier Zorro series. But in the second half, there no longer seems to be a definite end game in mind. Worst of all, the story does not seem finished at the conclusion of the 12th issue. Now maybe that was by design as this is not intended to be the final Zorro story ever written, but with the number of characters who did meet a final end or resolution to their stories in the first half, it seems quite a letdown to have so many characters left in limbo at the end of this second half.

There was such promise at the beginning, that this final failure seems all the more painful to read.