The Curse of Capistrano Illustrated

The Curse of Capistrano is a 1919 novella by Johnston McCulley and the first work to feature the fictional character Zorro (zorro is the Spanish word for fox). After the enormous success of the 1920 film adaptation, The Mark of Zorro, the story was republished under that name. Prior to being published in novella form, The Curse of Capistrano appeared as five serialized installments in the pulp magazine All-Story Weekly. Johnston McCulley (February 2, 1883 Ottawa, Illinois - November 23, 1958) was the author of hundreds of stories, fifty novels, numerous screenplays for film and television, and the creator of the character Zorro. Many of his novels and stories were written under the pseudonyms Harrison Strong, Raley Brien, George Drayne, Monica Morton, Rowena Raley, Frederic Phelps, Walter Pierson, and John Mack Stone, among others. McCulley started as a police reporter for The Police Gazette and served as an Army public affairs officer during World War I. An amateur history buff, he went on to a career in pulp fiction and screenplays, often using a Southern California backdrop for his stories. Aside from Zorro, McCulley created many other pulp characters, including Black Star, The Mongoose, and Thubway Tham. Many of McCulley's characters-the Green Ghost, the Thunderbolt, and the Crimson Clown-were inspirations for the masked heroes that have appeared in popular culture from McCulley's time to the present day. Some of McCulley's tales are available from Wildside Press. Pulp Adventures Inc. has published two oversized trade paperback volumes reprinting many of the original Zorro stories. McCulley is entombed in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.