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What did kids do before the invention of the computer. The wealthier kids who could read in the 1800s - 1900s had dime novels. Here are some of the super heroes they had long ago.

Above is the original Beadle's Dime Novels of 1866 and below is the cleaned up version. The rest of the Dime Novels are touched up by me with picmonkey.

"Beadle's Dime Novels were immediately popular among young, working-class audiences, owing to an increased literacy rate around the time of the American Civil War. By the war's end, there were numerous competitors like George Munro and Robert DeWitt crowding the field, distinguishing their product only by title and the color choice of the paper wrappers. Even Beadle & Adams had their own alternate "brands", such as the Frank Starr line. As a whole, the quality of the fiction was derided by higher brow critics and the term 'dime novel' quickly came to represent any form of cheap, sensational fiction, rather than the specific format." ipi/Wiki

Below is an 1891 Beadle's Dime Library, New York. There was artwork only on the covers > the rest of the Dime Novel (30 pages or more) were stories and information in type.

"This series ran for 321 issues, and established almost all the conventions of the genre, from the lurid and outlandish story to the melodramatic double titling that was used right up to the very end in the 1920s. Most of the stories were frontier tales reprinted from the vast backlog of serials in the story papers and other sources, as well as many originals.
Dime novel, though it has a specific meaning, has also become a catch-all term for several different (but related) forms of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction, including "true" dime novels, story papers, five- and ten-cent weekly libraries, "thick book" reprints, and sometimes even early pulp magazines.
The term was being used as a title as late as 1940, in the short-lived pulp Western Dime Novels. Dime novels are, at least in spirit, the antecedent of today's mass market paperbacks, comic books, and even television shows and movies based on the dime novel genres. In the modern age, "dime novel" has become a term to describe any quickly written, lurid potboiler and as such is generally used as a pejorative to describe a sensationalized yet superficial piece of written work." ipi/Wiki

"Brave and Bold is a boys' book written by Horatio Alger, Jr. It was serialized (published in parts) beginning on August 5, 1872 in the New York Weekly. Also published in the same issue was Alger's poem "Friar Anselmo". Brave and Bold was then published in book form by A. K. Loring of Boston in 1873. The story was serialized in Reader, an English magazine, in 1872." https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_and_Bold

"Brave and Bold hit a new high in Alger's work, according Edwin Hoyt, but Hoyt describes the story as a "fiasco". Gary Scharnhorst describes it as "horrifying", and lists a shooting, a stabbing, and a suicide among the book's elements. The book was reviewed by a reader of the children's magazine St. Nicholas; he described it as "of the sensational order" and was glad he did not meet its characters in real life." https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_and_Bold

"Denver Doll is one of the original – if not the first – female detectives in fiction, appearing in the dime novels beginning in 1882, original written by Edward Lytton Wheeler, the author of the popular Deadwood Dick series." http://newpulpheroes.blogspot.com/2014/08/denver-doll.html

"She originally appeared in four novels in Beadle's Half-Dime Library, which were reprinted in the Beadle's Pocket Library, Deadwood Dick Library and in Aldine Boys' First-Rate Pocket Library in England." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_Doll

Because of the scarcity of the original Denver Doll novel, some scholars could not determine her status in the appearance timeline. In the novel "Denver Doll's Drift" she is revealed to be a mine-owner."

Deadwood Dick Library Vol. V No. 53, 1899, featuring "Denver Doll's Device; or, The Detective Queen" by Edward L. Wheeler.
Deadwood Dick Library Vol. V No. 54, 1899, featuring "Denver Doll as Detective" by Edward L. Wheeler.
Deadwood Dick Library Vol. V No. 55, 1899, featuring "Denver Doll's Partner; or, Big Buckskin, the Sport" by Edward L. Wheeler.
Deadwood Dick Library Vol. V No. 56, 1899, featuring "Denver Doll's Mine; or, Little Bill's Big Loss" by Edward L. Wheeler.
Aldine Boys' First-Rate Pocket Library No. 252, "Denver Doll the Detective Queen" by Edward L. Wheeler (British reprint).
Aldine Boys' First-Rate Pocket Library No. 258, "Denver Doll's Victory" by Edward L. Wheeler (British reprint).
Aldine Boys' First-Rate Pocket Library No. 264, "Denver Doll's Decoy" by Edward L. Wheeler (British reprint).
Aldine Boys' First-Rate Pocket Library No. 270, "Denver Doll's Drift" by Edward L. Wheeler (British reprint).

"Silver Streak is a fictional superhero character created by Joe Simon that first appeared in Silver Streak Comics #3 (March, 1940), from Lev Gleason Publications. He is believed to be the second-ever comic book superhero whose primary power is speed; All-American Publications' The Flash preceded him by two months. However, Silver Streak beat out National Allied Publications' Johnny Quick (who debuted in 1941) as the first superhero whose two powers were speed and flight. Silver Streak has a kid sidekick called "Mercury" (soon changed to "Meteor"); he is also assisted by a hawk named "Whiz"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Streak_(comics) http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Silver_Streak

Public Domain Appearances
Captain Battle Comics #3
Daredevil Battles Hitler
Daredevil Comics #1
Dime Comics #1
Silver Streak Comics #3-19, 23

Credit Source: All images are public domain > Free to use
http://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1459
http://comicbookplus.com/?cid=2544
http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=37730
http://comicbookplus.com/?cid=3022
http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Silver_Streak and
Touched up comics with https://www.picmonkey.com/