And They Get By With It [The Coal Dealer]

By E. C. Segar, this Sunday strip deploys sequential panels and speech balloons to unfold a single gag: a coal dealer justifies inflated wartime prices through an absurdist family history linking his uncle's death to a disease, a horse, and broken teeth—each catastrophe traced back to coal. The strip exemplifies the visual vocabulary pioneered in newspaper comics: multiple tiers, varying panel sizes, and continuous narrative across the page. Segar's characters—the harried customer and the scheming profiteer—anchor the humor in recurring types. The strip appears during World War I price controls and materials shortages, making the dealer's price-gouging both timely and timeless.