Alex Toth's Zorro: The Complete Dell Comics Adventures Hardcover – January 22, 2013

I have wanted this material in a format like this for YEARS now, and now we have it. I have long felt that Toth's most enervating period was the Dell/Gold Key run at Western Printing over the course of 1957 through 1961 (just before he made a return to DC), and that Zorro was his high water mark there. Indeed, I consider Zorro to be Toth's "Magnum Opus". There was a brilliance at work here that is just damned hard to match. The Eclipse and later Image comics reprints of the 1980s and 90s---where the Zorro artwork was "gussied up" and grey-toned by Toth---were great showcases for old "A.T.'s" art (with no color distractions) and are wonderful to own. They kind of create a "throwback" quality to the series that evokes the actual black & white television show Disney ran on ABC, as well as the look of the 1940 Tyrone Power theatrical "Mark of Zorro". Thing is, though, the color comic book stuff as released by Dell was what we Toth nuts of the 1950s went bonkers over. The color stuff was what we knew and loved! Heck, that blazing color storytelling was what it was all ABOUT for us!!! For that reason, whatever imperfections might be there in this new color overhaul (and there ARE some...a little "coloring outside the lines", or some such, here and there) are really inconsequential; no big deal. They don't stop the story, they don't degrade the art, and they are easily overlooked. They don't get in the way of "the ride" and that is what is important. The book is also attractively bound and just has a spiffy look to the front & back covers.Inside is all the fun stuff the Dell Zorro is renowned for. The layouts are awesome. Toth had gotten full into his "movie" mode by this time. He approached illustrating a comic story as making a movie.He did "set design" for it, visualized set decoration as well, and did his layouts and character placements like he was going to clap the clapper and yell "Action!" through a megaphone. And, of course, he used "camera angles" for panel designs. Pure genius. Others have worked at this since, but Alex Toth was the trailblazer. As to this movie-look storytelling, check out the "set" design of the mission in the pages of "Zorro's Secret Passage", and the splash panel for "The Enchanted Bell" (among NUMEROUS other things!!!).Another fun thing to watch out for is the fun Toth had in "transforming" the first villain, Capt. Monastario, over the course of the original story arc. Early on, Toth renders Monastario in the general likeness of Britt Lamond, the actor who played him on television. Check out Monastario on, say, pages 13 through 15 of the story "Presenting Senor Zorro". Now watch as, over the course of succeeding issues and stories, Monastario's features begin to become increasingly demonic looking until, on pages 99 and 100 (sat the end of his "reign"), he is almost a dead ringer for Satan himself! All he needs is a spade tail, cloven hoofs, a cape, and horns! LOL!!!!Comics historians have commented on Toth's dissatisfaction with the writing of the series, but he had other gripes as well. Toth, being Toth, a cantankerous perfectionist, that was to be expected. One thing he was unhappy with was the Disney decision to give Zorro a cape. From creator Johnston McCulley on, Zorro had never worn a cape. Douglas Fairbanks, the screen's silent Zorro, wore no cape. Neither did any of the Zorro incarnations done as Republic Pictures serials, and neither did Tyrone Power in the 1940 "Mark of Zorro". It wasn't until Disney got hold of the masked night rider that he got "caped"---essentially because Disney thought it was cool looking and added flash and dash to the imagery. In the Tyrone Power 1940 film there is one segment---ONE---where Don Diego gos into Los Angeles as himself and has a situation arise where he needs to become Zorro. He covertly fishes a mask and a long cloak out of his horse's saddlebag and dons this "temporary" get-up, with the cloak covering his street clothes. He does his Zorro thing and then flees Los Angeles with a squad of army lancers in pursuit. In this sequence the cloak is shown flapping in the breeze as his horse thunders across the landscape. This flapping cloak looks so "cool" in this sequence that it was obviously what the Disney people looked at when they were designing their own Zorro costume. And, indeed, on the series, that billowing cape looks terrific; so much so that virtually every cinematic depiction of Zorro SINCE the Guy Williams version has included the cape, right on up to Antonio Banderas.To Toth, the cape was a pain in the butt. He objected that it inhibited movement and would get in the way when you were sword fighting.He was being a realist here, but Disney ruled the day, and Dell towed the line, so Toth's Zorro came cape included. In the story "Gypsy Warning", however, the story line relieves Zorro of his cape temporarily and here for several pages beginning on 145 Toth gets to draw Zorro the way he would PREFER to (note; the back cover of this book also depicts the capeless Zorro Toth preferred).If it wasn't the writing and the cape that irritated Toth about the Disney/Dell Zorro, it was the coloring of the character's costume. Dell colored the inner lining of the cape a blazing bright red, which was enough to set Toth's teeth on edge. He thought it looked like something Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee would wear as Dracula rather than what a hide-in-the-dark night rider would be garbed in (and besides, the t.v. Zorro, Guy Williams, had NO red lining on HIS cape!). The same was true of their coloring the sash around his waist a bright yellow. Sometimes the mask was rendered red as well. And Zorro's clothes were colored mostly a medium blue, the same blue Dell used for U.S. Cavalry uniforms. The cape was shown with a tinge more purple to it, though not much. Toth's preference was for Zorro's outfit (and his hair as well) to be the same color, overall, as was used for the character's horse, Tornado, throughout the series (and, indeed, I thought that would be a great color, too). Alex never got his way, though. The blazing red inner lining stayed on the cape (and LOOKS GREAT, truthfully!), the sash stayed yellow, and the shirt, pants, and outer side of the cape stayed in the blue tones. Boot color got no changes either.Despite all his grousing about it, Toth's Zorro became a milestone in comics art and stays something revered in comicology. Read it and you'll like it. It is a glorious exercise in graphic storytelling.

With the volume of reprint volumes of older comic book and comic strip material out there, one has to be very selective in what one purchases. I could go broke in a day, easily. This volume , though, is a must for any comic fan and student of graphic story telling. Alex Toth's work is simply stunning! His ability as a draftsman and story teller were unparalleled. Having owned a couple of the originals over the course of my time collecting comics, I must say the reproduction is one of the best from a technical standpoint. Toth's blacks are not muddied and the colors are true to the original comics. My son is 13 , and like most boys his age, he is obsessed with his video gaming system. But when I get a new collection of reprints of classic comic or comic strip material, he is lost in the book for the rest of the day, returning to it and reading it again days, even weeks later. This is one he will love , as would any young person who has a love of adventures and great visuals.

I read all the reviews here before buying this, and I was a bit leery because of some of the negative reviews; I have other Hermes Phantom books, and I know what the naysayers are talking about. Somehow coloring, at least the process Hermes and some other companies use, makes the fine-line stuff suffer a little. But I think the negative reviews are a bit over the top. This is still a great-looking collection of Toth's work, and you can see and appreciate the big bold strokes he uses, and there is still plenty of line detail. Although I don't have access to the original comics, I'm betting these are much better. You have to give Hermes credit for having the guts to print some of the B&W originals in the same volume as the finished product, as they did in the Phantom books.Let's face it; you wouldn't get an exact copy of the original drawings even if they reprinted them full size. This is a very good collection. If you're a fanatic about reproduction (which I am very close to) you may want to try the B&W collections out there. I still like the classy hard-bound volumes like these, that lay flat when you read them. Very good book.

If you were a small boy when Walt Disney introduced you to Zorro on Thursday night... If you still think that Guy Williams was the Fox to which all others - including Power and Fairbanks! - are to be compared... If you were a little shocked to see that Dell colored the inside of Zorro's cape red...Then you are probably a Boomer who loved the tales of Don Diego on TV and who will relive that thrill by reading these stories which Alex Toth so beautifully rendered in these reprints from the late 1950's. Yeah, I never thought that Alex caught the twinkle of Williams' eye or the gleam of his teeth. But these stories have a charm of their own. They remind us of Williams and Calvin and Sheldon as they cavorted through the Disney sets. But they also offer the delight of Toth doing Western comics once again! These are stories to be enjoyed one at a time before you drift off to sleep. Buy the collection!

What a great HC volume this is, and great photo covers of Guy Williams as Zorro. I collected and read these stories when they originally came out, sold them off in 1989, and never thought I'd see them in print again. Toth did a fantastic job on the art chores, even though he was peeved because the stories adapted directly from TV show episodes, and had too much dialogue and little action. You can't go wrong with this volume.