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No. 102: ZOMG

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ZOMG

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Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/pomh/?comic=102

Strip by: Ian Boreham

{A poster is pinned to the wall of a Spanish colonial building. The wall is covered in graffiti, consisting of many instances of the letter "Z" and also "I <3 Z". The poster has an image of a masked man at the top, and the same man, unmasked, at the bottom.}

poster text: "Zorro" aka "foxymask123" is actually Don Diego de la Vega of El Pueblo de Los Ángeles, son of Don Alejandro de la Vega. His constant defacing of other people's property and trolling of appointed officials and law officers forces me to reveal his identity. Actual face:

The author writes:

I remember seeing some episodes of a Zorro TV show when I was a kid. I remember it as being black-and-white, although that might be because we only had a black-and-white TV still at that stage. All I really remember was a mask, a sword, a Z mark and an aura of Spanishness.

I didn't know where it was set, but I kind of assumed Spain. Only much later did I realise it was set somewhere in the Americas. Only yesterday when writing this strip did I discover that it was actually set in LA, of all places.

So, when Hollywood makes a Zorro film, they don't actually have to go very far to film on location. (Well, I suppose the city might be a little different now from what it was like back then. They might have to go to some small village in rural California or Mexico to film it these days.

I was also unaware that the Zorro stories were written by an American writer in the twentieth century. I had assumed that Zorro was some sort of Robin Hood or William Tell traditional character. Mind you (putting on my Randall Munroe hat), in 1919, when the first Zorro story was published, the Zorro setting was about as far in the past then (or less) as 1919 is now.

Drawn in Krita and Inkscape.