ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Abie the Agent

· July 18, 1917

Abie the Agent
A Sunday comic strip featuring Abie, a Jewish immigrant character navigating urban life and business dealings. The strip employs the visual conventions established in early newspaper comics: multiple panels with sequential narrative, speech balloons carrying dialogue and humor, and recurring characters in familiar domestic or commercial settings. Abie the Agent ran as both a daily and Sunday feature, reaching millions of readers through the newspaper comic pages that served as the primary medium for sequential art before the comic book industry emerged in the 1930s. The strip's humor derives from character-driven situations and wordplay, typical of the comedy strips that dominated the newspaper funny pages during this era.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain