Abie the Agent

A Sunday newspaper comic strip following Abie, a hustling New York character navigating the city's streets and commercial life. The strip employs panel sequences with speech balloons to construct sequential narrative—visual conventions inherited from earlier comic supplements and developed during the newspaper boom of the 1900s. Abie the Agent exemplifies the immigrant-focused humor strips that populated Sunday comics pages, using rapid-fire dialogue and physical comedy across six panels to deliver gags about con artists, business dealings, and urban misadventure. The strip represents the comic page as America's primary source of illustrated sequential storytelling before the 1930s comic book format emerged.