Mystery Magazine, Vol. I, No. 4

This cover presents a turbaned man with darkened skin and heavy beard, illustrated in the orientalist style common to early 20th-century pulp magazines. The feature story, "Under the Hypnotic Spell," promised melodramatic intrigue—hypnotism being a popular pseudoscientific plot device of the era. Mystery Magazine inherited its visual language and serialized format from Victorian penny dreadfuls, cheap publications that had fed working-class audiences' hunger for crime, horror, and adventure since the mid-1800s. By 1918, the penny dreadful had evolved into the pulp magazine, maintaining the same commercial formula: lurid covers, installment narratives, and exotic or criminal settings designed to thrill readers for mere cents.