Street and Smith's New York Weekly

This penny weekly features a dramatic engraving of mounted riders in violent conflict—sabers drawn, horses rearing—typifying the sensational illustrations that sold working-class serials. Street and Smith's New York Weekly reached hundreds of thousands of readers hungry for serialized melodrama: tales of crime, betrayal, exotic villains, and narrow escapes. Published weekly at minimal cost, such papers democratized fiction for laborers and servants, delivering lurid plots in installments. These precursors to comic books combined crude woodcuts with breathless prose, establishing a visual-verbal storytelling formula.