Half the Ersantzo comics I’ve seen are recycled layouts from the golden age run, with the real Santo lifted off the art (literally) and the beefy new stand-in pasted down in identical poses. Note the bullet bra on the woman on the far right, from a comic published in the early 80 ’s. 50’s and 60’s fashions, cars and technology were all over the late 70’s and 80’s runs. On one hand, it just sucks that this isn’t the real deal, but on the other hand, the golden age stuff is all but gone and where else are you going to see these amazing creatures, imaginative predicaments and adept illustrations? I mean c ’mon... a giant bat in a headlock?!?!?

When you do hit the newer material from the 1970’s, you know it... look as those brutal fashions.

Hard to say if this “Incredible Shrinking Ersantzo” adventure is original or not. That’s an awfully 50’s looking laboratory inhabited
by the Mexican Dr. Shrinker. The latter fake Santo stuff, though, had an increasing amount of blood and explicit violence as times changed. Note how fundamental animal kingdom rivalries are thrown aside when nature is confronted by a tiny enmascarado...

Even with the bogus grappler, popularity of the Santo comics never completely waned, but did decline. It was the changing industry, increasing presence of imported comics from the U.S. and cartoons from Japan, and the public ’s evolving tastes that started a downturn in what was by the mid 1980’s seen as old-fashioned material. Cruz may have been a visionary genius in the early 50 ’s, but his work was virtually unchanged 30 years later – no evolution, no adaptation, nothing new to say.

Now, “decline” in this case means only selling 100,000 copies a week (a bi-monthly comic in the US that tops 100K is considered a best seller right now), but that is down from the former days of millions.

Whether the title would have failed for economic reasons or not, a bitter Cruz, abruptly pulled the plug, ending things on his own terms. Santo: el enmascarado de plata was cancelled without public notice, mid-storyline, and Cruz closed shop and moved to Los Angeles, where he passed away in 1989.

So ended the most prolific Mexican masked wrestler mass media run of all time. But was Santo the only enmascarado to get the sepia treatment? Find out in Los otros...

Article text ©Keith J. Rainville, 2007. Artwork from the private collection of Keith Rainville. Content reproduced is © of the original owners.

Despite the ravages of time, there is a category of “Santo” comics that show up on eBay quite a bit and are pretty easy to score – those starring the “fake Santo.” Call him the silver-masked shenanigan, the erroneous enmascarado, Sant-faux, the Saint of Aint, the ersatz Santo... or Ersantzo! Essentially, Santo purists and much of the lucha-collecting sphere has called bullshit on this era of the Cruz dynasty, and for that reason these are the books you actually see for sale once in a while.

A fallout with the publisher and a long and ugly court case over property rights left Cruz without his namesake star... or at least the rights to use the photographic imagery of that star. But this being a collage medium, having the rights to the stories, the backgrounds and the secondary character art leaves you rather viable. Cashing in on the word ‘santo’ being common verbiage, claiming to have created the phrase “Enmascarado de Plata” and the very notion of the wrestler as superhero, Cruz moved on without the lucha libre icon on board.

Many of the post-Santo Santo comics use recycled art from the golden age with burly body builder Hector Pliego in a slight variation of the silver mask and ring gear duplicating the original poses. The recycled art scam is obvious when you see an issue with the bogus Santo published in the early 80 ’s, but the men are in double-breasted suits and fedoras and the women in bullet bras.

New material was also shot in the 70’s, with less illustration embellsihment, and the fashions reflect. The noirish feel and kinship to the old Universal monsters and classic sci-fi cinema feel is rather compromised in the newer material, though.

Editorial Icavi was the Central and South American publisher/distributor of the latter era Santo series. These were conventional comic book size, mostly, and made up for the lack of the real ring legend with some incredible painted covers by Jose G. Cruz. Horror movie and fantasy pulp fans may see a slight resemblance here to some classics...