Out of the night, when the full moon is bright
Comes a horseman known as Zorro.
This bold renegade carves a "Z" with his blade:
A "Z" that stands for Zorro.
Zorro...the fox so cunning and free
Zorro...who makes the sign of the "Z."

In her newest book, Isabel Allende has reimagined one of my favorite action heroes as a multicultural character (the son of a Spanish aristocrat and a female Shoshone warrior) who is inspired to greatness by strong women. This is exciting to me, because I've loved the character of Zorro since I was a little girl. I watched the TV series on the Disney channel, and the sight of Guy Williams bringing justice to 19th century California inspired me to scratch the mark of Zorro onto every surface around me. I wanted to sew a dramatic "Z" onto all of my clothing (like the trademark "L" for Laverne), but this fell through because of my lagging attention span and lack of sewing ability.

Guy Williams was great on this show, although I didn't so much understand the presence of Annette Funicello and her incongruous guitar solos. She'd come on, and I'd instantly tune out, because then it was as if my favorite action show had morphed into Laurence Welk, bubbles and all. "This is boring!" I'd shout impatiently. "When's Zorro going to fight the evil, bearded, avaricious landlord who wants to evict his poor tenants? When's he going to play another hilarious prank on Sergeant Garcia?" To which my parents would respond, "Shut up and drink your gin!" Okay, not really. If such a thing had ever occurred, I would have instantly known that my parents had been replaced by giant sea pods, and that my best bet was to scramble out the window and climb into my spaceship for a quick getaway.

I have not cared for any of the recent renditions of Zorro (except for that George Hamilton vehicle, which was hilarious). The 1998 movie was passable, not great. This was not the fault of the cast. Anthony Hopkins was good, but I couldn't help wishing he'd come out in a mask of his own—the kind that he paired so nicely with a straitjacket in an earlier film. Catherine ZJ was competent and engaging, but she was still relegated to the role of the innocent, bosomy daughter, who has beem lied to by her father and must ultimately be saved. (sigh.) Okay, you gave her the ability to swordfight. How feminist of you. And then there was Antonio Banderas, who was by turns passionate and weepy, qualities that the TV Zorro never had and that I didn't appreciate here. This depth and emotionality may enrich our experience of newbie action heroes like Goofus Maximus in Gladiator (or whatever his name was), but duct-taping pathos onto a tradition as engrained in the culture as that of Zorro is like showing Indiana Jones weeping into his whiskey because somebody stepped on his fedora. The Zorro as portrayed on TV was the equivalent of Ricky Nelson: plastic and unflappable, but artful in his own way. And, of course, there was the comfort of predictability—you knew he'd defeat the baddies by the next commercial break, and you knew the choreography would be flawless. The TV producers on this show understood that it wasn't so imperative to reveal the human quality in Zorro, to portray the masked bandit as a sort of brooding Hamlet. And I think this is really the crux of the problem with the most recent Zorro movie. The director tried to turn an action hero into a revenge hero. Revenge heroes are part of a totally different genre (Braveheart, etc), in which depth of character is crucial for ensuring a satisfying catharsis. But with action heroes, what we really want is light-hearted, moderately violent, campy fun. I don't want my action heroes to dabble in issues of ontology unless it's in the most comical, Owen-Wilson sort of way. Just think about it. Do we really need to know about John McClane's troubled childhood? Of course not. We just want to see him kick the crap out of the terrorists in Nakatomi Plaza.

This problematic legacy will be an issue any time the Zorro story is reimagined using any visual medium. But with a book?—yes, I think you could accomplish it, much like Gregory Maguire has been successful reinventing modern mythology and classic fairy tales.

Why, Isabel, why? As if you didn't have enough to boast about, what with Eva Luna, The House of the Spirits, and Portrait in Sepia, now you have to go and do something else brilliant? I'll no doubt read your newest book and love it. And the Z-shaped marks will start appearing around my house again.