From the exhibition
Alphonse and Gaston
· October 5, 1902

This Sunday page follows two French characters through an alpine climbing mishap. The strip's visual economy—sequential panels with speech balloons, physical gags escalating across frames—exemplifies early newspaper comic conventions that preceded the comic book. Alphonse and Gaston, with their exaggerated courtesies and slapstick tumbles, established a formula of recurring characters and situation comedy that populated the Sunday supplements. The dense inking and busy composition reflect the era's newspaper printing capabilities and audience appetite for humor strips that could sustain reader engagement across multiple panels.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain