A young man and woman sit in a small boat, the man raising binoculars to scan the horizon while his companion holds a fishing rod. The cover promises "The Prodigal" by W.B.M. Ferguson, the lead story in this twice-monthly pulp adventure magazine. At fifteen cents, The Popular competed with dozens of similar fiction magazines flooding newsstands in the 1910s, each featuring painted covers designed to arrest attention at the newsstand. These wood-pulp magazines serialized adventure, romance, and mystery—genres that would later migrate wholesale into comic books. The composition here signals the magazine's appetite for outdoor adventure and romantic tension, twin engines of pulp entertainment.
About this artifact
- Date
- July 23, 1915
- 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.