A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1888 — 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 · 1888

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 589

1888 · Free to read

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 589 — page 2 of 16 — 2 / 16

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About this issue

This issue of Beadle's Half Dime Library features "Tom Cat and Pard; or, The Dead-Set at Silver City" by Lieutenant A. K. Sims. The cover depicts a dramatic confrontation in a frontier saloon: a man in period dress gestures wildly while figures tumble and struggle in the background amid smoke and chaos. Published weekly at five cents, Beadle's Half Dime Library epitomized the mass-market adventure serials that dominated American popular fiction in the late nineteenth century. These wood-pulp magazines trafficked in westerns, detective stories, and sensational narratives, establishing templates for action and genre fiction that would directly influence the emerging comic book medium.

Browse this issue page by page

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