Diamond Dick, Jr.: A Weekly Library

This penny dreadful serialized adventure fiction for working-class readers hungry for melodrama and crime. Published weekly at five cents, Diamond Dick, Jr. offered sensational plots—here, "A Run of Luck; or, The Twist-Up at Terrible"—featuring border brigands, government intrigue, and mysterious witnesses. The lurid typography and dense columns of text typify the format that flourished in the 1880s–1890s, when such serials outsold conventional literature. These stories, often featuring stock characters of frontier villainy and ethnic caricature common to the period, established narrative conventions and serial storytelling that would directly influence comic books: episodic cliffhangers, action-driven plots, and visual typography designed to arrest the reader's eye. Penny dreadfuls were dismissed by middle-class reformers yet proved the voracious appetite for cheap, illustrated sensation that comics would eventually satisfy.