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.

Home › Exhibition › Pulp Fiction › Read

A complete issue · 16 pages · 1885

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402

1885 · Free to read

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 2 of 16 — 2 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 3 of 16 — 3 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 4 of 16 — 4 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 5 of 16 — 5 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 6 of 16 — 6 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 7 of 16 — 7 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 8 of 16 — 8 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 9 of 16 — 9 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 10 of 16 — 10 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 11 of 16 — 11 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 12 of 16 — 12 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 13 of 16 — 13 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 14 of 16 — 14 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 15 of 16 — 15 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 402 — page 16 of 16 — 16 / 16

About this issue

A young man in evening dress gestures dramatically skyward, his arm raised in protest or invocation, while a massive shadow looms behind him. The cover announces Isodur the Young Conspirator; or The Fatal League, a serialized adventure by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham. This Beadle's Half Dime Library issue exemplifies the formula that dominated 1880s popular fiction: woodcut illustration paired with sensational title typography promising intrigue, danger, and exotic plotting. Priced at five cents and distributed weekly, these pulp magazines reached working-class readers with serialized tales of conspirators, secret societies, and supernatural threats—narrative templates that would later structure dime novels, pulp magazines, and eventually comic books themselves.

Browse this issue page by page

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