Do not get me wrong. I love Stan Lee just like any other fan boy out here. However Spider Man, The Hulk, Iron Man, the X-men all other Stan Lee creations have other one man to thank for making it all possible. That man is Johnston McCulley the writer responsible for the development of the modern super hero. In fact all super hero creations from Batman to Superman owe McCulley at least some part of recognition or bringing the idea of the masked avenger and the caped super hero into the American Psyche.
Who is Johnston McCulley?
Johnston McCulley was born and raised in Illinois in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. He first started his career in writing as a police reporter before serving in the army during the First World War as a public relations officer. After the war, Johnston decided to take both his love for writing and his fascination with the history of the American West and began to write pulp fiction serials and screenplay.
One of the first stories that he wrote was call “The Curse of Capristrano” which took place in California during Spanish Colonial times. The story which was serialized in 1919 in the pulp magazine “All-Story Weekly” told a tale of a mysterious masked avenger by the name of Zorro who was a defender of the common people and a curse to the tyrannical Spanish overlords who constantly found themselves both outfenced and outfoxed by the witty Colonial Robin Hood.
While “The Curse of Capristrano” ends with the brave hero finally revealing his true identity as the Spanish aristocrat Don Diego Vera, making Zorro a character intended for one story, something happened that ended up changing McCulley, his character of Zorro, and the whole masked hero genre forever. That something was the 1920 silent film adaptation of Johnston story called the Mark of Zorro starring the biggest box office star of the time: Douglas Fairbanks.
The popularity of the film encouraged McCulley to once again explore the character of Zorro, resulting in “The Further Adventures of Zorro” coming out in Argosy Magazine in 1922. In this reprisal, McCulley pretty much ignored the ending of his first story and also incorporated some of the character elements that Fairbanks brought to the character. Zorro would go on to be a mainstay of American pop culture appearing in numerous stories and novels by McCulley as well as a large number of films and television shows paving the way for other masked avengers who fought for truth, justice and the common man.
While McCulley went on to write other stories under a number of pseudonyms, he is most recognized for his creation of Zorro along with a number of other masked heroes (Black Star, The Green Ghost, The Crimson Clown) that served as inspiration for the development of the modern fictional hero. Zorro and other McCulley characters helped define the ideal hero as one who defends the common people, only uses violence when necessary and abhors killing.
- Watch the movie "Zorro" with Alain Delon.
- Watch the movie "The Mark of Zorro" with Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
- Watch the movie "The Bold Cabellero" with Robert Livingston.
- Watch the serial "Zorro Fighting Legion".
- Watch the serial "Zorro Rides Again".
- Watch the serial "Zorro's Black Whip".
- Watch the serial "The Vigilantes Are Coming".
Franck Benedittini
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