Vanity Fair, Vol. 6, No. 134

This cover features a caricatured figure in exaggerated Mexican dress—wide-brimmed sombrero, loose clothing—identified as "Fernando Wood in his famous rôle of Oliver Cromwell." Vanity Fair was a weekly illustrated humor magazine that, like penny dreadfuls and penny bloods, served working and middle-class audiences hungry for sensation. These cheap serials—costing one or two pence—delivered melodrama, crime, and Gothic horror in installments. While penny dreadfuls emphasized lurid plots of murder and mayhem, Vanity Fair offered political satire and caricature. Both formats prioritized bold visual imagery and punchy serial narrative. This tradition of affordable, image-driven entertainment directly prefigured the modern comic book's serialized format and mass-market appeal.