A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1890 — 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 · 1890

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 679

1890 · Free to read

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About this issue

This issue contains the opening installment of "The Freebooter's Legacy," a sea romance set in 1812 by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham. Young Captain Clifford Sweegan, a mysterious sailor known locally as the "Wizard Sailor," commands a chartered schooner on a mission to retrieve a buried treasure hidden years earlier on a Bahama island. Suspecting his crew of plotting mutiny over the supposed riches aboard, Sweegan deliberately tests them with false claims of treasure. When the men revolt, Sweegan and two allied young officers—brothers Harvey and Clarence Lynn, sons of a Boston merchant—along with a loyal spy named Caspar Capoul fight off the mutineers in a violent deck confrontation, killing and wounding several men. The chapter concludes with Sweegan abandoning the treasure hunt due to weather threats and reduced crew capacity. A secondary narrative begins featuring a young woman at a boat's helm caring for an ill companion, Mrs. Henshaw, a woman escaping from a smuggler who murdered her brother and forced her into marriage.

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