Johnston McCulley

John William Johnston McCulley, born on 2 February 1883 and died on 23 November 1958, was an American writer of hundreds of stories, fifty novels and numerous screenplays for film and television, and the creator of the character Zorro. Born in Ottawa, Illinois, and raised in Chillicothe, Illinois, he began as a police reporter for The Police Gazette and served as an Army public affairs officer during World War I before building a career in pulp magazines and screenplays. Zorro was first serialized in the story The Curse of Capistrano in 1919 in the pulp magazine All-Story Weekly. He also created other pulp characters, including Black Star, The Spider, The Mongoose and Thubway Tham, and wrote under several pseudonyms.