Sean Gordon Murphy, the acclaimed comic book artist behind Punk Rock Jesus, Tokyo Ghost, and Batman: White Knight, is set to launch a new, self-published series based on the classic masked adventurer Zorro. Murphy announced the project himself, revealing that he had personally licensed the rights, and would be releasing the title under a newly-formed publishing banner, although he did not have any more specific details to share yet, although a look inside his sketchbook for the book (tentatively titled Zorro: Man of the Dead) suggests that it will tie into Dia De Los Muertos, and take place in modern times.
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The latter can be intuited because some of Murphy’s concept art includes a souped-up El Camino — something not usually seen in traditional Zorro stories, which happen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That also gives Murphy some novel elements that he’s adding to Zorro, and makes it easier to hang onto the rights for those elements, if anyone wants them down the road.
Indeed, the rights to Zorro have long been a contentious issue. Created in 1919, the character should be in the public domain by now. A company called Zorro Productions Inc. claims that it controls the worldwide copyright and trademark to Zorro, after original author Johnston McCulley assigned his Zorro rights to Mitchell Gertz in 1949. Gertz died in 1961, and his estate transferred to his children, who created Zorro Productions, and have since been the primary licensing entity for the character. Courts in both the United States and European Union have found that the earliest McCulley novels and movies have lapsed into the public domain by now, but many of McCulley’s other books have not. Meanwhile, ZPI remains vigilant and litigious. The short version is that while the character of Zorro has lapsed into the public domain, ZPI is using their trademark on the name and distinctive likeness of the character to continue generating revenue.
You can check out Murphy’s art below.
Most recent comic books featuring the character have been published by Dynamite Entertainment who, among other things, published an ongoing series featuring Zorro and a crossover story featuring the Lone Ranger. There are at least two TV takes on Zorro currently in development: a young woman-led legacy sequel that was originally planned to air on The CW; and a more traditional take on the character from That ’70s Show and Minority Report star Wilmer Valderrama, which is set to air on Disney+.
