The All-Story Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 2

A lone figure braces in the prow of a small open boat on a storm-churned sea, arm cocked to hurl a harpoon while a fiery sunset burns behind the clouds — adventure distilled to a single charged instant. The Frank A. Munsey Company's The All-Story was the flagship of the wood-pulp revolution: ten cents a copy, printed on cheap ground-wood paper, its painted covers promising visceral action to readers who had no patience for genteel fiction. From its pages came Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan and John Carter, two of popular literature's most durable inventions. The pulps were the direct incubators of comic books — their painted covers the grammar of dynamic figures against elemental backdrops that panel artists would soon learn by heart.