While current pop culture may most recently have associated him with Antonio Banderas, Zorro actually dates back to the early 20th century.

He first slashed his trademark Z into the expansive and broad cloak of crime in a 1919 edition of the pulp magazine All Story Weekly. Created by Johnston McCulley, a former police reporter and author of numerous pulp fiction stories, Zorro has become one of the most memorable and recognizable figures to emerge from the pulp genre.

Film has been a huge part of Zorro’s ascendancy. The first silent picture, The Mark of Zorro, appeared just one year after Zorro’s first magazine appearance. Played intriguingly by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Zorro translated seamlessly from page to screen–where he continues to rivet viewers even today.

Twenty years after the first silent film, screen legend Tyrone Power starred in a remake of The Mark of Zorro, reminding fans of the Zorro’s wily potency as a hero. But it wasn’t until the 1950s, when Disney took over the character rights, that the franchise truly began to proliferate.

Disney cast Guy Williams, a relative unknown, as the title character in the 1957 Zorro television pilot, and Williams proved just as endearing a Don Diego de la Vega as Fairbanks and Powers before him.

The Disney show, though it only lasted two seasons, created a merchandising blitz that included comic books, a TV play set, socks, pajamas, watches, puzzles, games, coloring books, ties, belts and more. As the show faded from view, however, the merchandise featuring the character waned.

There were additional small screen Zorro adventures with both live action and animated shows, but it would be another forty years before Zorro rose to real prominence again. In 1998, Antonio Banderas stunned fans as Alejandro Murrieta, the successor to Anthony Hopkins’ Diego de la Vega in The Mask of Zorro. Both men embodied the spirit of the old screen incarnations, reigniting fans’ interest in a franchise revival, leading to a sequel, The Legend of Zorro.