Zorro: The Complete Dell Pre-Code Comics

I have just finished the Dell Alex Toth collection, which followed the TV "Zorro" closely, and just recently received this one. There is a big difference, especially in the art and story telling. Zorro creator Johnston McCulley was involved in some way with several of the stories in this volume and Everett Raymond Kinstler has art on several of the stories, which make this volume a treat. Of particular interest should be the fact that Zorro unmasks at the end in several stories........making one wonder if there were originally any plans to do more of the Zorro stories.

On the back of my copy, it says "deluxe full color reprint," which is inaccurate. The first comic reprinted is in full color, but each of the six others has one page which is inexplicably left in black and white. PP 82,119, 153, 189, 225 and 261. All right-hand pages. If there were four of them, I'd figure someone forgot to color the full sheet. Could they be printed six up? Anyway, I figure it's just the Hermes way. If only these were put out by IDW or Fantagraphics! Then we could count on the quality of the book, as well as the material.

great fun to relive those colorful Zorro comics....

All good. Beautiful material as reprinted.

This album reprints all seven of the Zorro comic books in the Dell 4-Color series (well, almost: see below), all done prior to Dell's later Zorro comic book series based on the Walt Disney TV show. At least the first two were adaptations of novels by Johnston McCulley (creator of Zorro), and all seven have a more adult orientation than the more juvenile Disney-related comic book. I mean both "adult" and "juvenile" to be descriptive and in no way a putdown. I read all of these as they came out (the 1950s were my childhood years) and I consider all the Dell Zorro comics quite good in their fashion; but the earlier, more adult-oriented stories have always been my favorites, and I was delighted to see them reprinted in this handsome volume. They are exciting, well-crafted narratives with beautiful illustrations (as the three people who have reviewed this book before me have already pointed out). The album also reprints the "extras" that were in the original comics (the informational pages on flags of California, different types of swords, etc.), and has an excellent and informative introduction by Max Allan Collins on the history of Zorro in books, movies, and television as well as comics, including reproductions of movie posters. The only factoid I can add to this extensive research is that the second Zorro comic, "The Return of Zorro" (Dell 425) is an adaptation of "The Sign of Zorro" by Johnston McCulley, which had been serialized in the magazine _Argosy_ in 1940. And I can confirm the speculation by one commenter that the pages in this album that are in black-and-white were that way in the original comics (since I still have all the original comics and can check). These pages were all on the inside back cover of the issue, and at the time Dell routinely printed the inside front and back covers in black-and-white. Notice in each case the black-and-white page is the penultimate page of the story, with the final page on the back cover, and so in color. I think on the whole that Hermes Press does a good job with their comics reprint albums, just as IDW and Fantagraphics do. But I feel I have to point out one oversight in this volume: turning from page 141 to page 142 in my copy I immediately noticed that two pages from the original comic are missing (and, since there is no gap in the pagination, I fear that this omission might be true for the entire print run). This occurs in the story "The Mask of Zorro" (Dell 538), where the last panel on p. 141 has Zorro speaking to the Russian baron, and the first panel on p. 142 suddenly cuts to Zorro speaking to the governor of California, omitting his stay among the Russians and his suspicions as to the nefarious scheme they are hatching to invade California. (That is not a farfetched notion, by the way: Catherine the Great and her successors did consider claiming land in North America by virtue of Russian territory in their day including native peoples in Alaska.) I particularly regret the missing pages because they contain one of my favorite lines from this story, when Baron Vasilenko watches his agent vamping our hero and muses: "Olga does her job well. If she holds Zorro's hand, he will not so easily draw his sword against us." The missing pages are why I do not feel that I can give this album the five stars it would otherwise deserve. But the contents are otherwise complete (with some valuable extras), and the stories are so good, and the reproduction so well done, that I still recommend it very highly.

These are very fine Zorro stories; not quite as good as the Alex Toth Zorro stories from Four Color Dell comics of the 1950's but better than most anything else. The artwork is particularly fine and I absolutely love the painted covers.