A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1879 — 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 · 1879

Beadle's Half-Dime Library No. 109

1879 · Free to read

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About this issue

This issue of Beadle's Half-Dime Library presents "Deadwood Dick as Detective," a western story by Edward L. Wheeler. The narrative opens in Rough Shod, a mining town in the Colorado carbonate region near Leadville. Mayor Clancy Adair hires the brutal proprietors of the Champion's Roost tavern—Captain Sal Savage and his ill-favored wife Nance—to murder an arriving stagecoach passenger named Carroll Holly for one hundred dollars. When the stage arrives that evening, several passengers register, including a young dandified stranger matching Holly's description, along with a white-bearded New York detective named Phineas Porter wearing green goggles. Holly, handsome and fair-haired, settles into the tavern's private room where he encounters a coarse, jeweled young woman who mysteriously recognizes him by his aliases—California Charlie and Buckshot Bill—claiming she knew him in Mexico three years prior.

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