Barnacle Bros, They're Good As Gone, and Hillmer & Holmes

Three newspaper comic strips from the Sunday pages, each employing the visual conventions that became the grammar of comics: sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring characters in domestic or aquatic scenarios. The strips feature slapstick humor and simple line work typical of early twentieth-century newspaper humor. Barnacle Bros shows a drowning man resisting rescue; They're Good As Gone depicts chaos over stolen clothes; Hillmer & Holmes presents a mermaid before an audience. These Sunday strips, which appeared alongside dailies in newspapers nationwide, established the format and character-driven narratives that would evolve into the comic book industry.