Zorro is back. The popular character, with a comic career tracing through Dell, Gold Key, Topps, Marvel, Image, Papercutz and a syndicated newspaper strip, is returning from a new publisher, Dynamite Entertainment. A release date has not yet been set.

As with their Lone Ranger and Red Sonja series, Dynamite indicated that the new series will start from the character's origin rather than pick up stories that were established previously. The company's license also allows they to revive Lady Rawhide, the companion character created by writer Don McGregor, who has written Zorro in comic book, newspaper strip and manga form.

When tracing the origin of the modern superhero, one looks not only to the Platinum Age comics that reprinted the top newspaper strips of their day, but to the rag-tag excitement of the pulps. Characters like The Spider, The Shadow, and Zorro had such a tremendous effect on early superhero creators that it's almost impossible to overstate their impact. Of those, perhaps the influence easiest to discern is writer Johnston McCulley's most famous creation, Zorro.

Don Diego de la Vega, alter ego of Zorro, the fox, was created by author Johnston McCulley (1883-1958) and first appeared in 1919 in the All-Story Weekly pulp story “The Curse of Capistrano.” Zorro has a long film history, ranging from the 1920 silent The Mark of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., to the 1981 spoof Zorro, the Gay Blade, with George Hamilton in a dual role. Modern fans may know the character best from the 1998 feature film, The Mask of Zorro and its 2005 sequel, The Legend of Zorro. On television Guy Williams embodied the flashy 19th century swordsman in the popular Disney series that aired on ABC from 1957 to 1959. The Family Channel ran a new series from 1990 to 1993, and a TV novella, Zorro: La Espada y la Rosa ("The Sword and the Rose"), debuted on Telemundo in February.

The Alex Toth-illustrated Dell comic books, the Don McGregor-written newspaper strips, and the introduction of Lady Rawhide are considered highpoints of the character's comic book incarnations. Zorro comic books appeared from 1949 to1961, 1966 to 1968, 1990 to 1991, 1993 to 1994, and 2005.