Alphonse and Gaston

This Sunday newspaper strip follows two extremely polite Parisian gentlemen whose elaborate mutual courtesy becomes the engine of physical comedy. The artist uses sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring characters to build gags across multiple scenes: Leon arrives in Paris; Alphonse and Gaston compete to defer to each other at doorways, dinner tables, and public spaces; their politeness cascades into slapstick disaster. The strip exemplifies early comics' visual vocabulary—panel borders, gesture, facial expression, and escalating action—developed through decades of newspaper illustration. Characters recur weekly, inviting readers to anticipate their manners-obsessed behavior. This format became the template for American comic strips and, later, comic books.