El Zombo Fantasma

An entertaining salsa of genres, Dave Wilkins and Kevin Munroe have created an engaging superhero whose wearing of tights makes sense for once as El Zombo Fantasma was "the most famous and notorious Mexican wrestler on the planet." A villain, actually, the kind the crowd loves to hate, and he feeds off the attention, basking in the spotlight. He's murdered after taking liberties with a title match he's paid to throw, losing by disqualification instead of taking a fall, delivering a brutal move on the champion, Captain Courageous. When his murderer approaches, he at first mistakes him for a hypocritical fan, "asking for my autograph after spitting on me at the show." Fast forward a year, key moments of his life flashing before him as he falls into some sort of purgatory, and El Zombo is presented with a deal: "Let me make this just as monosyllabically wrestler-friendly for you. If you no help girl and be good, you come back here and you go to hell for rest of... um... oh, yes... time." The girl in question is Belisa Alejandra Marguerite Consuela Chi-Chi Montoya, a 10-year old spitfire and one of the most wonderful characters to pop up in comics in ages. While El Zombo's name is on the marquee, this is as much Belisa's story as his, and like Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense went toe-to-toe with Bruce Willis, she more than holds her ground here as her own destiny is intertwined with her unorthodox, revenge-seeking guardian zombie. Munroe spins a fun tale, compact but not light, with more character development in a 3-issue story than many comics deliver over several years' time. These are characters you care about and, when the story ends, want to see more of. Wilkins' character designs are distinctive and his layouts are as energetic as the Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat vs. "Macho Man" Randy Savage's bout at Wrestlemania III. Hopefully there's a chance we'll see new adventures of El Zombo, and his precocious ward, Belisa, sometime in the near future.