Who's the Tennis Champion? Why, Billy Bounce!

This Sunday strip follows Billy Bounce, an anthropomorphic character whose elastic body absorbs impact without harm—the source of constant physical comedy. Across six panels, Billy competes in tennis against human opponents who grow increasingly frustrated as his bouncing physicality violates the sport's rules. The strip demonstrates key innovations of early newspaper comics: recurring protagonist, sequential panel narrative, speech balloons carrying dialogue and sound effects, and exaggerated body deformation for humor. Billy Bounce strips were among the foundational works establishing comic strip conventions in mass-circulation Sunday papers, influencing the visual language that would define twentieth-century sequential art.