A complete issue · 399 pages · 1865
The Argosy
A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1865 — all 399 pages of painted-cover fiction magazines that launched science fiction, horror, and hardboiled crime, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.
A complete issue · 399 pages · 1865
The Argosy holds a singular place in publishing history: launched by Frank Munsey in 1882 as a children's miscellany, it converted in 1896 to an all-fiction format printed on cheap wood-pulp paper, becoming the first true pulp magazine. That structural bet — low price, high volume, disposable format — created an industry. Argosy pages poured out sea adventures, lost-world romances, westerns, and proto-science fiction, training generations of readers to expect genre thrills for a dime. The narrative conventions it standardized — the cliffhanger, the exotic locale, the two-fisted hero — flowed directly into the comic book panels that followed two decades later. Every pulp that came after owed Munsey a debt.
Each page has its own page — the cartoon, who’s in it, and what the satire means.