Abie the Agent—'There Was Always an Out for the Tailor'

A six-panel comic strip by Herschfeld following Abie, a quick-witted character navigating urban commerce and social situations. The strip employs the visual conventions now standard to comics: uniform panel grid, speech balloons conveying dialogue and thought, and sequential narrative pacing that builds from setup to resolution. The humor turns on wordplay and character interaction rather than slapstick, reflecting the sophistication of early newspaper comics. By 1916, such strips appeared daily and Sunday in papers nationwide, establishing the format and visual language that would define comic books. Recurring characters and serialized gags kept readers returning, making newspaper comics a dominant form of entertainment and a training ground for generations of cartoonists.