From the tremendous success of his wrestling career as Santo, Rodolfo
Guzmán Huerta was approached in 1952 by editor Jose Guadaloupe Cruz to produce
as series of comics based on the character. Using a technique he developed years
before of collage and photo composition for his comic books, the Golden Age of Santo
debuted on September 3, 1952. In the origin story we have a masked avenger helping the
defenseless citizens of Santa Cruz from crime lords, when our hero is mortally wounded
one night by a gangster, he struggles to return home to his young son. Santo
requests the boy to carry on the legacy wearing the famous silver mask, as the tale
jumps sixteen years in the future to see the new Santo avenge his father's murder. Starting out
fighting common criminals in the first issues, the series later took a weird turn in the 1960s as Santo now fought
supernatural forces and weird villains. Sporting painted covers by Jose
G. Cruz, there were plenty of witches, vampires, mummies, zombies, werewolves,
and an occasional troll to fight our wrestling hero. Since Santo and the supporting
characters were photographed, cut, and pasted onto the comic pages, while the
weekly villains were usually drawn into place, it created a different "scrap book"
effect that provided interesting compositions not seen in other comics.
Devoted
to the Virgin of Guadaloupe, Santo and his famous silver mask developed a
legend that if his true face was ever shown, he would die a violent death, and this
religious connection gave him supernatural strength to deal with the many demons
and dangerous animals he confronted. Published twice weekly, the wrestler was now
becoming more famous outside the ring than in, especially with his first feature film
produced in 1958, and his extremely popular fifty two supernatural and sci-fi movies to follow up
until 1982. The later comic stories had Santo support a larger cast
including his child protege, Bobby, Argo, an alien friend, Kyru the white
sorceress who loved him, Ik the troll from the center of the earth, and other
zany characters. The villains of the issues were just as colorful with Cahuatzin, head of the
ancient Aztecs, Manya, the evil red witch, Tubek, the hypnotist criminal, Ali
Gazah, the magician guru, and Kroto a murdering scientist, just to name a few.
Later, after a falling out between Cruz and Huerta, a young
bodybuilder named Hector Pliego donned the silver mask that now sported a snake
shaped "S", a new belt, knife, and other changes to round out the whopping
eight hundred and sixty four issues of this second series. The third incarnation
of the feature debuted in 1976 with the Colombian reprints of the Mexican issues
by Editor Icavi and later continued by Editor Vord for two hundred eight six issues before it
last series with Editor Cinco in a smaller digest format. Jose G.Cruz who was the
driving force as a comics editor, artist, screen writer, and actor, was never one to pass up a good
image for his Santo covers. His many artistic swipes were numerous and easily spotted on
the comics whether it be from a Hammer horror movie to the classic Star Wars, but that
was part of the charm from this unique "common man" character that became a pop icon
in Mexican culture having his comic run continuously for thirty five years
finally ending in 1987.
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