A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1887 — 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 · 1887

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 498

1887 · Free to read

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About this issue

This Beadle and Adams dime novel, published February 1887, features "Captain O'Name's Mission" by Jno. W. Osborn. The serial opens with the murder of young Rollo Axfell, the mine-owner's son, near the frontier camp of Nabob's Bar, killed by members of Bludso's gang during an ambush. The narrative then shifts to the escape of Perdido Fernandez, a skilled "border sport" pursued across the plains by Bravo Brice and his criminal gang, the Serpents of Cimarron, seeking vengeance for previous vigilante actions. During the chase, Perdido is shot and knocked from his mustang by a rifle shot—though a mysterious stranger then emerges from the grassland. The serial combines Western adventure, gunplay, frontier camp politics, and murder mystery elements, featuring frontier dialect and action sequences typical of late-nineteenth-century pulp adventure fiction.

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