From the exhibition
Abie the Agent
· July 12, 1917
A daily newspaper strip following Abie, a tenacious Jewish character navigating New York commercial life. This strip exemplifies the formal grammar of sequential art: bordered panels, speech balloons, recurring characters, and sight gags built from visual escalation. Abie the Agent ran as both daily and Sunday installments in the 1910s-20s, reaching audiences through the newspaper comic pages—the primary medium for comics before the pulp magazine boom. The strip's fast-paced dialogue and character-driven humor shaped how daily strips would function: quick stories resolvable within a few panels, designed for urban readers seeking brief, comedic relief.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
