Before being published in book form,
The Curse of Capistrano appeared as five
serialized installments in the
pulp magazine All-Story Weekly. In 1920, the story was adapted as the silent film
The Mark of Zorro starring
Douglas Fairbanks as the hero Don Diego Vega. The title was a reference to the hero's habit of marking enemies or surfaces with three sword cuts, forming a letter "Z." The film met with enormous success, leading to public demand for more Zorro stories. In 1922, McCulley began a new series of over 60 serialized stories in
Argosy All-Story Weekly. Many of these stories were later collected and published as
The Further Adventures of Zorro,
Zorro Rides Again, and
The Sign of Zorro. Taking advantage of the character's rising popularity in film and prose, and not wishing to confuse interested buyers by using the original title, the five-part prose story was then republished as a novel entitled
The Mark of Zorro by
Grosset & Dunlap in 1924. Since then, each new edition of the book has been published under the same title. The 1940 film has been referenced in numerous
Batman comics as the film that hero Bruce Wayne sees on the night his parents are murdered. ==Setting==