A complete issue · 32 pages · 1893
Beadle's Pocket Library No. 484
A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1893 — all 32 pages of painted-cover fiction magazines that launched science fiction, horror, and hardboiled crime, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.
A complete issue · 32 pages · 1893
By James L. Bowen, this serial installment (No. 484, from Beadle and Adams, 1893) establishes a frontier mystery. In Silver City—a ramshackle settlement of seven buildings—a well-dressed stranger, Charles Marline, arrives and meets secretly with an Indian named Blue Belt in the forest. Observed by the suspicious scout Tom Taylor, they perform a blood-oath ceremony, becoming "brothers." Back at the tavern, the landlord Bawny Corrol and Taylor drug Marline's coffee. Rendered senseless, he is visited by a young woman who mysteriously revives him by positioning his head at the window during a rainstorm, allowing cold rain to counteract the poison. Marline awakens confused but alive, realizing he has an unknown ally. The story combines frontier suspicion, secret alliances, and poisoning intrigue.
Each page has its own page — the cartoon, who’s in it, and what the satire means.