Alex Toth's Zorro

Here’s another blog that I’ll have to whip through (no pun intended) as I’m once again ahead on my reading and behind on my blogging. So, short and to the point it will be.

ISBN: 978-1582400907

Firstly, it’s worth a mention that this book is sold under several slightly different titles depending on where you look for it. The title from the indicia of this second edition is: The Complete Classic Alex Toth Zorro, but the cover title is “The Complete Classic Adventures of Zorro by Alex Toth” and the spine has a slightly different word order too. Normally this wouldn’t pose much of a problem, but these stories have been reprinted previously by Eclipse under a similar title, the only difference being that they were split over two volumes, so it is worth checking which edition you are looking at before purchase or you may end up with only half of the strips.

Whilst I’ve admired Toth from a distance for some time the combination of my income versus expenditure and the recent trend of repackaging the slightly more obscure Ditko and Kirby strips has kept me from buying any Toth reprints. But I always like to mention why a particular book has ended up on my bookshelf and in this instance, it was about sixty percent character to forty percent creator. I’m an unabashed fan of Zorro. Don’t get me wrong, I’m far from a fanboy, I’m the first to admit that there have been several absolutely awful adaptations of the Fox, but the original pulp serial, The Curse of Capistrano and the first talkie film, The Mark of Zorro (1940) starring Tyrone Power are what Zorro is all about for me.

So it was primarily my love of the character coupled with an interest in seeing more of Toth’s work that inspired me to get a copy of this book. (I also just love comics from this era, pre superhero, late 50’s, etc.)

I wasn’t disappointed.

From the opening pages I was pulled in to the over the top drama and swashbucklery of the strip. It’s pure adventure from beginning to end. Many of the villains and story lines are peculiar to the Disney series from the late 1950’s, however even if you aren’t familiar with the Disney series they are still satisfying strips without any prior knowledge of the TV series.

In terms of Toth’s style I found it reminiscent of Ditko, not in form but in the artists intent. Both Toth and Ditko have an unwavering devotion to tell the story in the most succinct way possible. On the page at least, Toth’s ego is non-existent. There’s no grandstanding or undeserved splash pages. Everything on the page is there to further the story rather than to highlight the artists ability. Toth’s lines are quite loose and almost impressionistic in places, with several silhouette panels that work perfectly with the subject matter. With some artists this might give an impression of laziness, but Toth uses it as part of the composition of panel, as a way to highlight the relevant aspect without the panel looking cluttered or confusing. There is one particularly beautiful panel, which unfortunately I can’t provide a scan of, where two characters are standing in the shadow of a tree, it would have been perfectly acceptable for Toth to have drawn the subjects in silhouette, but instead the characters are defined with the individual shadows of the trees branches falling on them. After seeing this and a few other panels I was convinced that some of the strips were produced at short notice, where as with other episodes Toth had a little more time to compose the strips before publication.

Another strong point in regard to Toth’s line work is his ability to draw recognisable emotion on his characters without it looking like pantomime. This is something that I’ve mentioned on this blog before as a particular bug-bear of mine, few comic book artists, even some of the greats, have struggled with this. But Toth, in this volume accomplishes it with a minimum of fuss and a economical use of lines. There are only a few artists that I think have mastered this and seeing Toth’s ability in this book, I would include him in that woefully short list.

 

Toth tells us in his introduction that the cape is an element of Zorro’s costume that he did not enjoy drawing. There’s a certain irony there, because, like faces, few comic artists are proficient at drawing drapery, which, considering how many characters wear cloaks is damning really. Toth’s use of the cloak as a dramatic element is fantastic, there are things you can get a cloak to do in a comic that would never be satisfactorily described in prose and would be impossible to capture on film. Toth clearly appreciated this and even though he found it a pain in the arse to draw, he makes great use of it in several scenes. So, yes Toth’s understanding of and ability to draw drapery is up there with Jerry Robinson and Steve Ditko.

In short, these two-hundred or so pages have more than adequately shown me why Toth is held in such high regard and I’m pretty sure that you’ll be reading more blogs about whatever Toth comics I can get hold of in the not too distant future.

Mad Thinker Reads…………

The Amazing Adventures of Don Diego De La Vega.

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