A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1878 — 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 · 1878

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70

1878 · Free to read

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 2 of 16 — 2 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 3 of 16 — 3 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 4 of 16 — 4 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 5 of 16 — 5 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 6 of 16 — 6 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 7 of 16 — 7 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 8 of 16 — 8 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 9 of 16 — 9 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 10 of 16 — 10 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 11 of 16 — 11 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 12 of 16 — 12 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 13 of 16 — 13 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 14 of 16 — 14 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 15 of 16 — 15 / 16

Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 70 — page 16 of 16 — 16 / 16

About this issue

This woodcut illustrates "Old Zip's Cabin," a frontier adventure by Captain J. P. C. Adams featuring a backwoods encounter. The crude engraving shows two figures in dramatic confrontation—a man and woman rendered with the exaggerated features typical of period illustration. Beadle's Half Dime Library pioneered mass-market pulp fiction at ten cents a copy, flooding America with serialized tales of frontier exploits, frontier justice, and exotic adventure. These cheaply printed magazines on rough paper reached working-class readers excluded from genteel literature, establishing narrative templates—the resourceful protagonist, the wilderness setting, the violent climax—that comic books would later inherit and refine.

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