A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1883 — all 16 pages of painted-cover fiction magazines that launched science fiction, horror, and hardboiled crime, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.

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A complete issue · 16 pages · 1883

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 296

1883 · Free to read

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About this issue

This 1888 Beadle and Adams dime novel, edited by Edward L. Wheeler, presents "Denver Doll's Drift; or, The Road Queen's Big Campaign," a Western adventure serial set in the mining camp of Freshet Flats, Arizona. The narrative opens in Jim Fisk's grocery store where Jean La Force, a smooth card sharp, boasts of winning Denver Doll's lucrative quartz mine through an "El Paso skin game"—he has lent her a thousand dollars on a twenty-four-hour mortgage. When the mysterious Arizona Alf arrives and stops La Force from strangling elderly miner Uncle Job, the two engage in a boxing match. Simultaneously, a masked road agent holds up a stagecoach, ordering its passengers—including a fat gentleman, a dandified swell, and a Black servant—to line up for robbery. The narrative intercuts between these developing confrontations, establishing conflicts over the mine's ownership and introducing frontier vigilante justice.

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