Billy Bounce

W. Denslow's *Billy Bounce* follows a boy and his animal companions through slapstick boxing matches rendered in sequential panels. Each row captures a complete round, with action flowing left to right and top to bottom—a visual structure that became standard in newspaper comics. The strip employs speech balloons, exaggerated body language, and repeated characters to build narrative across installments. Denslow, who illustrated *The Wonderful Wizard of Oz*, helped establish the visual grammar of early comics: discrete panels advancing a story, expressive line work, and comedic timing through composition. Sunday newspaper pages like this one were laboratories where artists invented the language that would define the comic book industry.