Alice Wields the Sheep Shears

This four-panel strip follows Alice as she attempts to shear an old ram, with characteristic slapstick escalation. The sequence moves from Alice's initial approach through the shearing attempt to comedic chaos, employing visual gags and action lines typical of early newspaper comics. Speech balloons carry dialogue and sound effects across each panel. The strip demonstrates the narrative conventions developing in daily newspaper comics of the 1900s—recurring characters in episodic situations, panel-by-panel progression, and physical humor as primary comedic driver. These early strips, published in newspapers before the comic book format existed, established the sequential art vocabulary that would define the medium: bordered panels, integrated text and image, and character consistency that allowed readers to follow ongoing adventures.