A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1899 — 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 · 1899

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1096

1899 · Free to read

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1096 — page 2 of 16 — 2 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1096 — page 3 of 16 — 3 / 16

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Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1096 — page 15 of 16 — 15 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1096 — page 16 of 16 — 16 / 16

About this issue

"Dandy Dick's Dragnet," by Robert Randolph Inman, depicts a mounted confidence man displaying fraudulent insurance papers to two pedestrians on a city street. The wood-engraved illustration captures the con game genre popular in dime literature—stories of urban swindlers and their marks. Published by M.J. Ivers & Co. at five cents, Beadle's Half Dime Library epitomized the cheap serial fiction that dominated American newsstands in the 1890s. These pulp magazines, printed on wood-pulp paper and featuring crude but dynamic engravings, trafficked in crime, adventure, and sensational plots. They established narrative templates—the clever rogue, the gullible victim, street-level intrigue—that would migrate directly into early comic books, defining how sequential art would depict crime and deception for generations.

Browse this issue page by page

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