ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

The Adventures of Johnny Mouse: He Takes a Punch at His Beans

· April 26, 1913

The Adventures of Johnny Mouse: He Takes a Punch at His Beans
This six-panel strip follows Johnny Mouse through a comedic confrontation with his dinner. The sequence exemplifies early newspaper comic conventions: numbered panels, simple line drawings, physical gags, and a clear narrative arc. Johnny attempts to punch his beans, which multiply and scatter across panels 3–5, culminating in his retreat under a table in the final frame. The strip demonstrates the visual vocabulary emerging in Sunday supplements: isolated rectangular panels containing a single moment, human-scaled action, and slapstick humor. Published in the era when newspaper comics—printed in color on Sundays, in black and white on weekdays—were establishing themselves as a distinct medium, separate from political cartoons and editorial illustration.

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