Alphonse and Gaston

This Sunday strip follows two French characters whose exaggerated politeness creates slapstick chaos. Alphonse insists Gaston enter a doorway first; Gaston refuses; the routine escalates through six panels as both men tumble, crash, and collide while maintaining absurd courtesy. The strip exemplifies early comic page design: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters in daily situations, and physical comedy that needs no words to register. By 1903, such strips had become the dominant form in American newspapers, establishing visual conventions—panel borders, expressive poses, sight gags timed across frames—that would define comics for generations.