Vanity Fair, Vol. 6, No. 136

This British satirical weekly cover caricatures Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times, fleeing with newspapers in hand. Vanity Fair exemplified the penny press that thrived on serialized melodrama, political satire, and sensational imagery for working-class readers. These cheap weeklies—ancestors of modern comics—packaged entertainment through vivid woodcuts and punchy typography, trafficking in gossip, crime, and social mockery. Their visual storytelling and serialized format established templates the comic book medium would later adopt, making them crucial precursors to twentieth-century sequential art.