A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1885 — 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 · 1885

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 394

1885 · Free to read

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 394 — page 2 of 16 — 2 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 394 — page 3 of 16 — 3 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 394 — page 4 of 16 — 4 / 16

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Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 394 — page 16 of 16 — 16 / 16

About this issue

This issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly contains the opening of a serial Western story titled "The Man Who Meandered in out of the Moist," beginning with Chapter I. During a violent mountain storm, a lone horseman dramatically enters a crowded log tavern called Hotel Hencoop, a stage stop between a Western railway and the mining town of Death-Rattle. The tavern hosts miners who struck it rich alongside card sharpers from Glendon. The mysterious, elegantly dressed visitor—carrying diamonds on his shirt and riding an ornate horse—introduces himself as Yreka Jim by claiming his name appears in his horse's left eye. Hencoop, the tavern proprietor, accepts this inexplicable proof and offers Yreka Jim a drink. The story continues into Chapter II, "The Arizona Cocktail," where a skeptical Eastern businessman named Girard Gambetta of Chicago questions Yreka Jim's claims about the horse.

Browse this issue page by page

Each page has its own page — the cartoon, who’s in it, and what the satire means.