Behave Yourself

This Sunday strip demonstrates the visual storytelling conventions that shaped early comic pages: tiered panels, speech balloons advancing narrative and gag, recurring characters negotiating social situations. The left column isolates a single figure's problem—a date cancelled due to scandal—while the right panel expands into a crowded dinner scene where etiquette rules collide with circumstance. The artist uses contrasting scales (intimate close-ups versus group tableaus) and physical comedy (a man dismounting a horse) to build humor across distinct gags. By the 1920s, newspaper strips had become laboratories for panel layout and character continuity, establishing visual grammar that would define the comic book medium itself.