Zorro - Man of the dead #[nn]

History

Sean Gordon Murphy first publicly announced his intention to produce a Zorro project via Instagram, revealing that he had personally licensed the rights from Zorro Productions, Inc. and planned to publish it under his own imprint before Massive Publishing came on board as the series' publisher. The Kickstarter campaign launched in October 2023, timed deliberately to coincide with Día De Los Muertos, and the first issue hit comic shops on January 10, 2024. The four-issue miniseries was colored by UK-based Simon Gough, who had previously worked on DC titles, and the collected edition—gathering all four issues—was subsequently offered in premium Kickstarter-exclusive formats as well as a standard trade paperback through Massive Publishing and distributed internationally, including through Dark Dragon Books for the Dutch-language/Benelux market.

Trivia · 10 facts

• Writer and artist: Sean Gordon Murphy, working as sole writer-artist on the full four-issue miniseries (and its collected edition).
• Colorist: Simon Gough, a UK-based colorist with prior credits at DC Comics.
• Publisher of original single issues: Massive Publishing (USA); the graphic novel/collected edition was distributed internationally including by Dark Dragon Books (Benelux).
• The series is a four-issue limited series; the collected graphic novel (the 'nn' format in catalogs) gathers issues #1–4 in one volume.
• The story is a modern-day reimagining set against a Mexican drug-cartel backdrop, with Diego de la Vega portrayed as a trauma survivor who adopts the 200-year-old Zorro legend after witnessing his parents' murder as a child.
• Murphy personally licensed the Zorro rights from Zorro Productions, Inc. before partnering with Massive Publishing—an unusual self-initiated rights acquisition for a creator of his profile.
• The Kickstarter campaign (Oct.–Nov. 2023) funded well past its goal, unlocking a suite of retailer-exclusive variant covers by artists including Joe Quesada, Humberto Ramos, Adam Hughes, Amanda Conner, Walt Simonson, Dustin Nguyen, Matteo Scalera, Tony S. Daniel, and Rafael Albuquerque.
• The campaign's stretch goals were innovatively structured so that hitting funding milestones also unlocked additional variant covers available to order at local comic shops—not just Kickstarter backers.
• Rosa, Diego's sister, is introduced as a significant new supporting character in the de la Vega family mythology, working undercover within the cartel.
• Zorro was originally created in 1919 by Johnston McCulley in The Curse of Capistrano; this series marks one of only a handful of times the character has been helmed by a single creator serving as both writer and artist on a full self-contained narrative.

Cast · 1 character

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