Alice Brings in a Friend to Supper

This Sunday comic strip demonstrates the visual storytelling conventions that defined early newspaper comics. Six panels follow a child character named Alice through a dinner episode, using sequential art to narrate a complete gag: Alice arrives with a guest, her mother objects to the intrusion, and chaos erupts at the table. The strip employs speech balloons, panel borders, and a recurring protagonist—techniques inherited from nineteenth-century satirical prints and developed into the grammar of American comics. Published in newspapers as both daily and Sunday supplements, such strips were the direct precursors to the comic book format, establishing how readers would consume sequential narrative art for decades to come.