A complete issue · 8 pages · 1888
The Banner Weekly: 'The Captain's Enemy'
A complete, restored issue of Penny Dreadfuls from 1888 — all 8 pages of cheap serialized Victorian sensation fiction — crime, horror, and lurid melodrama, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.
About this issue
This issue features two distinct literary works. "When Rest Comes," a poem by Eben E. Rexford, contemplates death as peaceful sleep and eternal rest, offering consolation to the bereaved. The serial "The Captain's Enemy; or, The Evil Genius of it all," credited to Dr. Noel Dunbar, presents a frontier romance spanning Nebraska and Virginia. The narrative opens with a Jewish trader hiring Sergeant Bainbridge to assassinate Captain Dudley Delmont at a Nebraska fort for one thousand dollars. The assassination succeeds, but complications arise when the Captain unexpectedly appears alive at his father's funeral in Virginia, having survived the attack. The story then shifts to The Retreat plantation, where the returned Captain encounters Aubrey Moore, his father's secretary, amid the family's grief and confusion over the apparent false reports of his death.
Browse this issue page by page
Each page has its own page — the cartoon, who’s in it, and what the satire means.