From the exhibition
Adventures of Johnny Mouse
· July 26, 1913

This newspaper strip follows Johnny Mouse through a sequence of comedic encounters, employing the visual conventions that defined early comic art: distinct panels, speech balloons, and exaggerated character expressions. The narrative unfolds through five frames showing Johnny meeting a skeletal figure, haggling over diamonds, and being knocked backward by a playing card. The strip demonstrates the rapid visual storytelling that emerged in newspaper Sunday pages during the 1910s, when artists developed the panel-based grammar that would become foundational to comic books. Johnny Mouse exemplifies the recurring animal characters—inspired by vaudeville and animation—that populated newspapers of this era, offering readers daily humor through accessible, instantly readable sequences.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain