The Argosy, Vol. 28

No painted cover here — this is the pre-pulp original: a typeset page opening a serial installment of Called to the Rescue, Chapter XXXI, printed on the cheap wood-pulp paper that gave the pulp era its name. Frank Munsey's The Argosy began in 1882 as an all-fiction weekly; this 1879 issue predates that pivot, appearing in its earlier literary-magazine form with no illustration beyond printer's ornaments. Yet the DNA is present — serialized adventure fiction, affordable price, mass audience. When Munsey relaunched the title as all-fiction on pulp stock, he invented the format that would spawn science fiction, weird horror, and hardboiled crime, and hand those genres wholesale to the comic book.