Zorro’s Shadow: How a Mexican Legend Became America’s First Superhero - Long before Superman or Batman made their first appearances, there was Zorro. Born on the pages of the pulps in 1919, Zorro fenced his way through the American popular imagination, carving his signature letter Z into the flesh of evildoers in Old Spanish California. Zorro is the original caped crusader, the first masked avenger, and the character who laid the blueprint for the modern American superhero. Historian and Latin American studies expert Stephen J. C. Andes unmasks the legends behind Zorro, showing that the origins of America’s first superhero lie in Latinx history and experience.

Stephen J. C. Andes received his doctorate at Oxford University and is an associate professor of history at Louisiana State University. He is also the author of The Mysterious Sofía and The Vatican & Catholic Activism in Mexico & Chile.

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