The Golden Argosy, Vol. I, No. 18

Before the garish painted covers of the classic pulp era, there was this: The Golden Argosy, founded by Frank Munsey in 1882 and widely credited as the first true pulp magazine. This issue's front page is typographically dense rather than pictorially sensational—a single column-wide wood engraving depicts a tense garden confrontation, a young man seized by the collar while a second figure looks on, illustrating Frank H. Converse's serial 'Jack Bond's Guest.' The masthead declares it 'Freighted with Treasures for Boys and Girls.' Printed on cheap wood-pulp stock at two-and-a-half cents, Argosy pioneered the all-fiction format that, within a generation, would birth science fiction, hardboiled crime, and sword-and-sorcery—the direct ancestors of the American comic book. Artist uncredited.