Before the Flood

John B. Gruele's Sunday strip depicts prehistoric creatures in conversation, establishing character through exaggerated anatomy and expressive poses. Multiple panels show a long narrative: one character boasts of accumulated tusks and claws from past battles, while others react with skepticism. The strip employs speech balloons anchored to speakers, sequential panel layout, and recurring cartoon types—mammoth, bear, human—to construct humor across space. Gruele's line work emphasizes silhouette and gesture over anatomical accuracy. This page represents the newspaper Sunday comic as a space for extended gags and character interaction, the formal vocabulary that would define early comic strips and eventually the comic book medium itself.