The Curse of Capistrano the Original Adventures of Zorro

This premium quality edition contains the complete and unabridged text of The Curse of Capistrano, Johnston McCulley's original tale of the adventures of Zorro, printed on heavy, bright white paper in a large 6x9 format, with page headers and a fully laminated full-color cover featuring an original design. Also included in this edition is a new, original biographical sketch discussing the life and work of the prolific, but enigmatic, author. First published in 1919 as a serial in the All-Story Weekly pulp magazine, this story was originally titled The Curse of Capistrano and was the first appearance of the Zorro character, the dashing masked vigilante fighting against the oppression of the King's officials in Old California, while hiding his real identity as Don Diego Vega behind a foppish facade. When it became the basis for the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks film The Mark of Zorro and was republished as a novel to coincide with the film, it was re-titled as The Mark of Zorro. Numerous Zorro stories, books and films followed, some following Johnston McCulley's original characterizations more closely than others and all, including McCulley's own later stories, essentially disregarding the ending of the original story without explanation. Born in Ottawa, Illinois on February 2, 1883, Johnston McCulley was a prolific writer who published extensively in the pulp magazines of the day under a variety of pen names. He created a number of popular masked, costumed vigilante characters and gentleman villains with secret identities, and his work was a major influence on subsequent pulp characters. In particular, The Shadow was inspired in part by McCulley's work, in turn serving as a major inspiration for Batman, and the modern super hero of American comic book fame owes much to McCulley. Among his many creations were The Green Ghost, The Crimson Clown, Black Star and The Spider, all of which had elements, such as secret identities, sidekicks, imaginative gadgets and weapons, that became mainstays of later characters in the genre. McCulley died on November 3, 1958 in Los Angeles, reportedly after a series of operations, the end of a prolific career, and a life shrouded in mystery, that produced Zorro, one of the most widely known fictional characters in the world.