subject: Pulp Fiction And The Legend Of Zorro [print this page] In 1882 Frank Munsey created the pulp fiction magazine format. He produced magazines on cheap pulp paper so he could reach a vastly wider audience, selling his "pulps" at ten cents, less than half the price of a typical slick magazine such as Harper's. With other publishers following suit, it revolutionized the industry as millions of Americans from all walks of life could afford them.
In 1919 New York based writer Johnston McCully created the spanish superhero, Zorro (Spanish for "fox"), who appeared for the first time in Frank Munsey's pulp fiction magazine All-Story Weekly in the tale, "The Curse of Capistrano", which was later published as a novel in 1924 as The Mark of Zorro.
Frank Munsey's All-Story magazine launched the career of Johnston McCully within its pages, joining the ranks of the now-legendary pulp fiction writers of the day including Louis L'Amour, Max Brand, Edgar Rice Burroughs and L. Ron Hubbard (whose tale Six-Gun Caballero, runs in a similar vein to the Zorro brand of adventure).
The Story of Zorro
The story of Zorro follows the secret identity of Don Diego Vega, a nobleman living in the Spanish colonial era of California in the small town of Reina de Los Angeles (Queen of Angels, 1823-1846). This town is now the city of Los Angeles, and California was at the time still a province of Mexico and people spoke Spanish, not English. Many Franciscan monks who went there to set up missions also owned much of the land.
With the aid of his deaf and mute servant Bernardo, Zorro, a dashing black-clad masked outlaw defends the people of the land against tyrannical officials and other villains. Not only is he much too cunning and foxlike for the bumbling authorities to catch, but he delights in publicly humiliating those same foes. Zorro, a swashbuckling master swordsman, is also famous for using the point of his sword to leave his trademark "Z" everywhere he goes.
Zorro follows in the footsteps of Robin Hood "to avenge the helpless, to punish cruel politicians", and "to aid the oppressed." He appeared in four novels and three novellas that were all serialized in Argosy magazine, in fifty-five short stories that appeared in several other pulp fiction magazines such as West Magazine, Max Brand's Western Magazine, and the Zorro story in Short Story Magazine in 1959 after McCully's death.
McCully's life is strangely enigmatic, and very little is known of his personal life. He was born in Illinois in 1879 in Ottawa, Illinois, and worked as a crime reporter for a newspaper in the early 1900s, and started selling to the pulps in 1909, writing under his own and several pen names. He wrote hundreds of stories, fifty novels and numerous screenplays for film and television. He created many famous pulp fiction characters, "The Black Star," "The Spider" and "The Crimson Clown" among them, but Zorro has been his most popularized character.
The Films
More than eighty films based on Zorro have been made throughout the world. The first by Douglas Fairbanks in 1920 with The Mark of Zorro. Tyrone Power, Guy Williams, Frank Langella and Antonio Banderas have also taken up the trademark black hat, mask and rapier.
Currently 20th Century Fox are working on a reboot Zorro film tentatively called Zorro Reborn with Gael Garcia Bernal in the title role, that is set in a post-apocalyptic future. It is really more of a science fiction take on Zorro, than a traditional western. Sony Pictures is also planning another film based on the 2005 novel Zorro, by Isabel Allende.
Zorro was one of the many pulp fiction characters which entertained millions of Americans in the pulp fiction magazines that were the main form of entertainment during the first half of the 20th century, written by authors like Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon), Lester Dent of "Doc Savage" fame (Indiana Jones muse), L. Ron Hubbard (Fear) and Walter B. Gibson (with nearly 300 tales featuring "The Shadow").
While the Zorro character is one of the more famous "dudes", there were hundreds of stalwart and square-jawed heroes that are crumbling away in the pages of the pulp magazines that are seventy or more years old. Black Dog Books in Lombard, IL is now republishing some of Lester Dent's "The Shadow" series, Adventure House is republishing gems like "Vice Squad Dectective," "The Pajama Party Killer" and Galaxy Press is republishing Hubbard's vintage pulp fiction, inlcluding the western, Six-Gun Caballero, featuring Michael Patrick Obanon, an unsung hero cut from the same swashbuckling cloth as Zorro.
