Strike! Set 'Em Up Again on the Other Alley!

This Sunday newspaper strip follows Billy Bounce and friends in an alley bowling game that goes comically awry. The six-panel layout uses speech balloons, sequential action, and visual gags—a rubber ball bouncing wildly, characters sent flying—to tell a continuous story across the page. By 1905, newspaper comic strips had established the visual language that would define comics for decades: recurring child characters, expressive line work, panel-to-panel narrative flow, and slapstick humor. Sunday pages like this appeared in major newspapers and became models for the comic books that followed, demonstrating how sequential art could sustain reader interest week after week.