A fortune teller in elaborate costume reads tarot cards for a fashionably dressed woman, while a menacing shadow looms behind them. This ten-cent pulp magazine represents the direct lineage between Victorian penny dreadfuls and modern comic books. Such publications fed working-class readers' hunger for melodrama, crime, and the occult through serialized stories and vivid cover illustrations. The fortune-telling scenario reflects period anxieties about fate and deception. These affordable magazines reached wide audiences and established narrative and artistic conventions that would shape the emerging comic book medium.
About this artifact
- Date
- February 1, 1918
- Rights
- Public domain — free to view, share, and reuse.
- Restoration
- Digitally restored and hosted by comicbooks.com.
Part of our mission to preserve and restore the public-domain heritage of the medium.