From the exhibition
10-Story Detective, June 1945
· June 1945

A woman in a red evening gown struggles with a man in a suit while reaching toward a revolver, watched by onlookers in formal dress. The cover announces "Tit for Two" by Bruno Fischer in bold typography characteristic of pulp adventure magazines. *10-Story Detective* was among dozens of dime-pulps saturating newsstands in the 1930s and 1940s, each packed with ten or more complete stories. These wood-pulp periodicals competed through lurid painted covers and fast-paced plots—hardboiled crime, murder mysteries, and noir intrigue. Sold at five to fifteen cents, they reached millions of readers and directly shaped the detective and crime genres that would migrate into comic books and paperback originals after the war.
Public domain (copyright not renewed), restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain