From the exhibition
It's Men Like Brainy Bowers That Makes History Repeat Itself
· February 21, 1904

This Sunday page follows Brainy Bowers, a scheming con artist in checkered pants, as he attempts to sell a historical "discovery" to gullible townsfolk. The narrative unfolds across nine panels with escalating visual chaos: Bowers begins with his pitch, expands his audience, and ultimately flees when his marks realize the deception. The strip employs the visual grammar that defined early newspaper comics—sequential panels, speech balloons advancing plot and character, and recurring protagonists. Published in the Sunday comics section when such pages drove newspaper circulation, this strip exemplifies how artists of the period used slapstick humor and recurring characters to build reader loyalty across dailies and weeklies.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain