A fortune teller in elaborate costume reads tarot cards for a fashionably dressed woman, while a menacing shadow looms behind them. This ten-cent pulp magazine represents the direct lineage between Victorian penny dreadfuls and modern comic books. Such publications fed working-class readers' hunger for melodrama, crime, and the occult through serialized stories and vivid cover illustrations. The fortune-telling scenario reflects period anxieties about fate and deception. These affordable magazines reached wide audiences and established narrative and artistic conventions that would shape the emerging comic book medium.
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About this artifact
- Date
- February 1, 1918
- Rights
- Public domain — free to view, share, and reuse.
- Restoration
- Digitally restored and hosted by ComicBooks.com · high-resolution version available.
Part of our mission to preserve and restore the public-domain heritage of the medium.