Zarco: A Centaur In the Old West

by Toril Orlesky

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, LGBT, Graphic Novels Comics

104 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[❁K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah. I was very excited to see there was a short story set after HotBlood! but this was not what I had in mind. I did like the new character they introduced but I didn't like how they picked apart the happy ending provided in the original story. It made me quite sad.

If you enjoyed the ending of Hotblood! like I did I would recommend avoiding this continuation all together. That being said, beautiful art as always but the ending was a bit confusing.

You may enjoy it, I just wasn't a fan of the tragedy after a really satisfying ending in Hotblood! I wish this story had been focused on new characters.

Give it a go if you like, but I will try to distance this story from the original in my mind. I'm sure some people may like it as it did feel very realistic but I was unable to move on from the fact that one of the main characters was killed off and the other was given a new love interest.

[Brandie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this graphic novel to be abstract in the artwork and in the story itself. This made it difficult to follow. But I loved the color palette which is reminiscent of what I think of from watching westerns. I generally had an idea of what was going on and this was made more solid in the author/illustrator's Materials section at the back of the book. I love when they add items like this. You find it more in graphic novels but I would love to see it more in regular novels.

It was fascinating to read and see how the idea came to them while driving through the country in California and how it manifested over time and how it was conceptualized. Some times I think that is the best part of the novels!

And the cover draws you right in!

[Ryofire · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the art is gorgeous, and the romance is nice in concept, and the new characters are neat, the abstractness of this is just a bit too much and hard to follow. At a certain point it just becomes single seemingly random panels of nothing. While single-panel stories can work, even over a long course of time, like Matt Rhodes' "Tellurion", there's just really nothing here to work with. The plot being dumped sort of confusingly at the end doesn't help, either.

Neat concept. Not so great execution. But the art is pretty and the premise is nice. And it's short if you've got nothing better to read.

[Jamie Sands · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story is a lot lighter and the art a bit more abstract than with Hotblood, but it had the same epic Western centaur feel which I do enoy.