Argosy All-Story Weekly, August 20, 1921

A tense painted cover: a square-jawed cowboy in blue shirt and wide-brim hat grips a branding iron or tool above open flame, one hand steadying a wide-eyed woman beside him — both poised against a smoky, impressionistic Western landscape. Yellow display lettering announces Tophet at Trail's End by George Washington Ogden, billed as "A Spirited Tale of the Old-Time West." The bold red masthead — ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY — signals the dominant pulp franchise of the era. Frank Munsey's Argosy, founded 1882 on cheap wood-pulp paper, pioneered the mass-market fiction magazine and incubated the adventure, Western, and proto-fantasy genres that comic books would systematically inherit a decade later. Ten cents a copy; four dollars by the year.