Don McGregor did a second Lady Rawhide series the year after the first. With black-and-white art by Esteban Maroto, and a story involving a sexy lady pirate (who uses a rusty sword so she can kill you with just a scratch), plus a passenger who turns out to be a vampire (who saves Lady Rawhide from blood poisoning by drinking her blood.) More adult in tone, for a given value of that term. Like something you might see in a Marvel black-and-white or Vampirella magazine in the '70s.
The book abruptly stopped at 5 issues, I'm guessing due to financial issues, and that was it for Lady Rawhide. Until Dynamite picked up Zorro again in the early 2010s, and she got another 5-issue mini-series.
Eric Trautmann sets the book somewhat later in time, as there are already trains, six-shot revolvers, and early Gatling guns present in the Mexico. There's a brief mention of Anita's brother being blinded by Monasterio over suspicion of being Zorro, but the idea is that, by this time, she's doing the vigilante thing for herself. Adrenaline junkie. This version of Lady Rawhide's more confident, more experienced. Has her own reputation among the soldiers and the people, has her own hideout and a servant/assistant who can't speak (due to a close encounter with a noose). She has her own foil among the soldiers, a Capitan Reyes, who, unlike Monasterio, is an honorable man who tries to do his duty without cruelty or needless violence.
The gist of the story seems to be that things are shifting to extremes. The business of Mexico has attracted interests from outside the country (read: the United States), and they don't care if being brutal incites violence, so long as they get their money. And so they have their own agents, who don't balk at firing at churches or crowds of protesting peasants if its eliminates a threat.
Simultaneously, there's an entire vigilante group of women called the Sisters of the White Rose, who are set on flipping the board entirely. Violently eliminate corrupt governors and kill the soldiers. Leave behind any members who can't make it on their own. To them, someone like Lady Rawhide, who fights injustices as she finds them and redistributes hoarded food and medicine to people in need, is still an enemy. She's trying to address inequities of the system from within, rather than tearing it down and starting over. Too extreme for the people in control, not extreme enough for the ones trying to take control.
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