Artist Michael Wm. Kaluta turns his attentions to El Zorro, the Fox, in celebration of the character’s 100th anniversary for the cover of the Hall of Fame edition of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide #49 from Gemstone Publishing, which will be featured in the April 2019 PREVIEWS from Diamond Comic Distributors.
Johnston McCulley’s Zorro made his debut in the novel The Curse of Capistrano, which was serialized in five installments that ran from August 9 to September 6, 1919 in the pages of All-Story Weekly, a pulp magazine. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford chose The Mark of Zorro, its adaptation, as the first film released by their company, United Artists. Since then, “The Fox” has gone on to enjoy a healthy fictional career in film, television, novels and comics around the world.
Kaluta is no stranger to Zorro or dozens of other pop culture icons. After breaking in at Charlton, he became known for illustrating Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Carson of Venus for DC in 1972. The following year he moved on to what for many is his signature work, a run on The Shadow, also for DC. He has revisited the character a number of times.
In the decades that followed, Kaluta established himself as a premiere cover (and too infrequently interior) artist on an array of titles and characters ranging from “I, Vampire” in House of Mystery to Madame Xanadu, and from Conan The King to The Spectre. With writer Elaine Lee, he has produced a number of Starstruck tales. Among other projects, he has currently been providing covers for American Mythology Productions’ Zorro comics.
The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (CBPG) #49 dives deep into Zorro’s comic book history with retrospectives on the Zorro comics of two pivotal creators, Alex Toth and Don McGregor, by The Library of American Comics’ Bruce Canwell. Kaluta’s cover ties his classic interpretation of Zorro into American Mythology’s current Zorro series.
The book is scheduled to go on sale Wednesday, July 17, 2019….
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