A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1884 — 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 · 1884

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 376

1884 · Free to read

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About this issue

This weekly Beadle and Adams publication (October 7, 1884) features the opening installment of "California Joe's First Trail: A Story of the Destroying Angels" by Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery. Set during the California Gold Rush, the narrative follows a wagon train of four vehicles containing two families—the Scott family from Tennessee and Pierre Gabelle's French-Creole family—camped on the Kansas River near Independence, Missouri. The story introduces California Joe, a lean twenty-year-old Kentuckian who joins the caravan seeking fortune in California after romantic entanglement at home. A second stranger soon arrives: a meek, long-haired Methodist preacher in black broadcloth accompanied by a small mule named Charity. The preacher's arrival unsettles the Scotts, who extend considerably less hospitality than they showed California Joe. The narrative establishes frontier social dynamics and hints at coming conflict through the title's reference to "Destroying Angels."

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