Some comics seem as if they will never become a reality.

The storyteller has written the story, the artist has interpreted the script into story-telling visuals that you can hold in your hands. It exists, it's tangible, yet even as you stare it, you know, something has happened that has made it clear there is a damn good chance the readers will never hold the actual book in their hands.

Oh, the book might close to print. No one puts the time and energy into producing a book thinking it'll stay on a shelf, and that all the intent and purpose will only end up gathering dust on that shelf, and never be read or seen. Once in awhile, you run across that script, you see the pages of art, and you sigh. When you are actively involved in making it the best book possible, who believes that is going to happen, that the creativity that swept you on day after day won't matter, certainly won't change the manuscript's fate. Business decisions can kill the physical reality of that manuscript (and in comics those art pages) from ever becoming that reality an audience can hold in their hands. You're not thinking of that possibility. No, during the active period, of writing and drawing and lettering and coloring the book, you are sure it's going to happen. Who would be spending all that money just to have the book end up nowhere.

It's a done deal. You believe that.

Until it doesn't happen.

The book is finished; you hold it and consider it, but the decision has been made, and truly, it seems as if the series is dead.

No Lazarus here!

Keeping your equilibrium in the entertainment business can be tricky. You have to go on. You have to leave that story behind. That's what you tell yourself. Yet, if you truly believed in that story, you can never entirely leave it behind, just as you can never truly leave loved ones behind. The story said something. You've lived with for too long to dismiss it. Every time you look at those pages, it haunts you. The fans who love Zorro, this one they never get to see, never experience.

And then, there is a glimmer of new hope, and your equilibrium is endangered, you don't want to get those hopes up too high, but maybe, just maybe, the Lazarus legend has substantiality, maybe the book has had a reprieve, maybe there's a way it will finally reach the reader.

Some books have a convoluted history.

They are literally years in the making.

They can nearly slaughter your emotional equilibrium, no matter how you try to keep balance, because you start to believe it is going to happen, then you KNOW it is going to happen, and then something you could never foresee happens, and once again, the book is non-existent.

ZORRO: MATANZAS! is one of those books that had all of the above.

I have viewed pages of Mike Mayhew's art for this series since 1994. Note the year, folks.

I have had little B & W Xerox copies shot down to comic book size, stapled together to create my own pre-published comic, so I will have no surprises, hopefully, of what the book will look and read like when it comes out, except, of course, when it DOESN'T come out. I would look at this beautifully detailed art over the years, thrilled by what Mike had done, certain that this was a story worth telling, believing it had a look that not many comics employed these days. This, I felt intensely, was exceptional stuff!

I looked at it admiringly, talked enthusiastically about it, and was saddened, because as time went by, it was further away from ever happening.

No audience would have a chance to see or read it.

I have always had a great deal of anxiety writing these behind the scenes, chronological historical text pieces that attempt to recount, at least from my perspective, how a book came together, who did what when, what affected what you got to see. I'm not sure why I am so tense writing these pieces. I certainly have no one to blame but me that I am writing them. I want to do them. They were my idea in the first place, though when I have to actually write them I think I was out of my mind to suggest it. I believe there are many readers who do want to know the inside story, what was going on behind the scenes, the same way people do about their favorite TV series, or movies they have loved.

Some while back I did a length interview with Jon Cooke for COMIC BOOK ARTIST Magazine detailing my days writing the BLACK PANTHER, KILLRAVEN, MORBIUS, and LUKE CAGE at Marvel Comics during the 1970s.

This is a great magazine, and Jon Cooke puts much enthusiasm and energy into preserving an oral history of comics. If you love comics, and you want to know more about the personalities and prejudices in comics, you should pick up this magazine.

The difference with a piece like this is I'm not answering questions from memory, about topics I haven't thought much about in years. I'm living in the present, with the stories I am telling now. When I write a piece like this, when I finally figure out how to start it (which attributes to my initial anxiety in doing it, I'm sure), I have pulled out my yearly, daily log books and have started to search for references on the Matanzas series, when I started writing it, what happened while I was writing those pages, and when I finished the last page of script. While these logs are far from complete, they offer me a wealth of details I'd have forgotten otherwise.

Originally I began writing the ZORRO: MATANZAS! story arc on April 8, 1994.

The issue you hold in you hands was supposed to be the Topps Comic Zorro series, issue #12.

The very next issue would start the second year of the monthly book, and I wanted to keep the series vital and stimulating and evolving. It was my intent as a storyteller to make the book accessible to first time readers, but also add new facets to strip and characters for the fans whom had been following us issue after issue. I didn't want them to feel I'd become complacent, and, more importantly to the storyteller, that they could guess where I was going with the series before I got there! By the end of the next issue of MATANZAS! you'll see that their series does live up to its hype that it is the story that "…changes Zorro's life…forever!"

In the interval of years, I've always had to be careful that the shocking events and revelations in MATANZAS! wouldn't be revealed long before the story could be read. If that happened, all the dramatic impact would be dissipated.

I was always careful what I showed to fans at comic conventions, letting them see many of the bold, beautiful double-page pencilled spreads Mike Mayhew had drawn, but passing by the crucial sequences that would kill the story's hopefully visceral events, its twists and turns, the small and large slaughterings, the slaughterings of intellect and flesh!

Another concern I had as a storyteller, as I was entering this second year, was to shift for awhile from Lady Rawhide as a prominent figure in the series that had the overall, umbrella title of ZORRO'S RENEGADES. I wanted to focus on Lucien Machete, and develop him as a more complex man than we had seen pre-to-fore. Yet, all of these decisions were made before anyone knew Lady Rawhide was going to become so popular that she'd have her own series, or that she'd make almost any Top 10 list for over half a year in any magazine that covered comics and had a Top 10 list. There were more of them around in those days than now. Does anyone give credit (or blame) to David Letterman for this trend in Top 10 lists?

To clue you in on what was actually going on with the ZORRO comics when I started to pen these initial second years' worth of stories, let me give you a little insight into the intricacies and strange time frames of producing a monthly comic.

As I started to write ZORRO: MATANZAS!, ZORRO #3, which introduced Lady Rawhide, had only been on the stands for a couple of weeks, so the frenzied reaction to her had not yet really begun. ZORRO #4, the issue that introduced Moonstalker, was due to hit the stands on April 13, 1994, the week after I started writing MATANZAS!

I was in the midst of proof-reading and marking up lettering corrections for ZORRO #5.

What was Mike Mayhew doing?

Mike was in the thick of illustrating ZORRO #7.

Everyone concerned with the series, including Mike, was increasingly aware Mike was not going to be able to do a book of this calibre on a monthly basis. It was a fact we would have to deal with realistically. No one knew that before ZORRO # 12 would go to press, the series would be put on hiatus, and Mike would be drawing a LADY RAWHIDE mini-series entitled: IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, and in keeping with that, I had no idea I was going to be writing that story.

I wrote LADY RAWHIDE: IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE in between Parts 3 & 4 of MATANZAS!

I can tell you now, I wasn't thrilled with the idea. I was in momentum of what was happening at the Slaughter Corral, and to have to abandon those characters and go to a completely different story, was like being told to stop running when you're in a race, and you can see the finish line. I could see the parameters of the story in my head. On a daily basis I was living with it, and becoming more convinced I could make it all work, get everything out of the scenes I'd envisioned. There are continuity demons waiting to strike, not just in being consistent with characters, but in the tone and purpose of the story you are creating, finally at the point where you are going to realize sequences you have planned perhaps for over a year!

Stop!

You're out of breath. You're disappointed. You can see the finish line, but there's a new race, a new story, to undertake. You'll have to pick up this race, this story, if you're lucky, another time.

The demons of thought translated into finished reality, what you meant for the story to communicate, that purpose and intent, you can only hope you can re-find it, recapture it.

The MATANZAS! (Spanish for Slaughter Corral, an actual ritual practiced in early 1800 California) was inspired by research. It was a visually stimulating situation that captured a vital part of early Angeleno's life.

I wanted to center the events around this one day, set against a startling beautiful backdrop, a day that would change everyone's lives.

I didn't have any idea that it would take from 1994…to 1999…for you to finally have a chance to see it.

   August 2, 1999