From the exhibition
Binnacle Jim
· April 23, 1905

This Sunday newspaper comic strip follows the maritime adventures of Binnacle Jim and his crew. The six-panel layout uses speech balloons and sequential action to narrate a shipboard incident involving a tattoo, a British lion, and a series of physical gags. The comic employs the visual vocabulary developed in newspaper strips of the 1890s–1900s: recurring characters, panel borders that guide reader flow, and exaggerated anatomy for comedic effect. Strips like this appeared weekly in Sunday supplements, reaching millions of readers and establishing the formal grammar that would define American comic books for decades to come.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain