One of the comics we’ve been most looking forward to here is the upcoming crossover featuring Django (of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained) and Zorro (of, well, Zorro). It’s been a few months since it was announced, but that time has allowed co-publishers Dynamite and Vertigo to, you know, get some art done. And that art, by Dynamite regular Esteve Polls, is pretty great.
The first issue also has a pair of covers by Jae Lee and Francesco Francavilla.
Dynamite describes the series:
Set several years after the events of Django Unchained, Django/Zorro #1 finds Django again pursuing the evil that men do in his role as a bounty hunter. Since there’s a warrant on his head back east, he’s mainly been plying his trade in the western states. After safely settling his wife, Broomhilda, near Chicago, he’s again taken to the road, sending her funds whenever he completes a job. It’s by sheer chance that he encounters the aged and sophisticated Diego de la Vega – the famed Zorro – and soon finds himself fascinated by this unusual character, the first wealthy white man he’s ever met who seems totally unconcerned with the color of Django’s skin… and who can hold his own in a fight. He hires on as Diego’s “bodyguard” for one adventure and is soon drawn into a fight to free the local indigenous people from a brutal servitude, discovering that slavery isn’t exclusive to black folks. In the course of this adventure, he learns much from the older man (much like King Schultz) and, on several occasions, even dons the mask and the whip… of The Fox!
While I like the story, by Quentin Tarantino and Matt Wagner, there are some things that I find odd about it. The pair know the source material well enough to know that a story in which both these characters could appear would feature much older Zorro than we usually think of (his stories are set decades before Tarantino’s film), but they weirdly forget that Diego de le Vega isn’t white.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of that and really hoping it’s just bad promotional copy. We’ll find out when the book hits shelves in November.
