Zorro is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed as a dashing masked vigilante that defends the commoners and Indigenous peoples of California against corrupt and tyrannical officials and other villains. His signature all-black costume includes a cape, a hat known as a sombrero cordobés, and a mask covering the upper half of his face.
The Cover to The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley, The All-Story Magazine, August 9, 1919, featuring the character
Zorro's debut in the novel The Curse of Capistrano (1919).
Douglas Fairbanks in the first Zorro film, The Mark of Zorro (1920), which was instrumental in the early success of the character
Zorro (Guy Williams) and Bernardo (Gene Sheldon) in Walt Disney's 1957–1959 Zorro television series
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century.
Cover of the pulp magazine Spicy Detective Stories vol. 2, #6 (April 1935) featuring "Bullet from Nowhere" by Robert Leslie Bellem
November 1927 issue of Black Mask, featuring The Continental Op
Cover of the pulp magazine Dime Mystery Book Magazine, January 1933
Image: Detective Book Magazine 002