Newspaper Comic Strips: Three Examples

These three strips exemplify the visual language that newspaper comics developed: recurring characters, sequential panels advancing a gag, speech balloons for dialogue. From left to right: *Barnacle Bros* features slapstick humor and physical comedy typical of the era's entertainment pages. The middle strip uses exaggerated facial expressions and body language to land its joke. The third, *Hillmer & Holmes*, packs multiple characters and a denser narrative into its Sunday space. The artists working in newspapers—drawing daily deadlines and weekly color pages—invented the panel structure, word-balloon placement, and character consistency that became the foundation of comic books. These strips circulated to millions of readers and established comics as a distinct visual medium separate from illustration or pure cartoon.