Bud 'n' Bub: The Big Blow

Ed Kressy's *Bud 'n' Bub* follows two boys as one proudly displays a new saxophone—a gift from his father—only to learn its steep price tag. The comic's four-panel structure uses sequential art to build a joke: each panel advances the narrative while speech balloons carry the dialogue that delivers the punchline. The recurring child characters and domestic setting typify newspaper comics of this era, which pioneered the visual language later adopted by comic books: panel borders to control pacing, word balloons for character voice, and visual gags tied to recognizable situations. Such strips appeared in Sunday papers and dailies nationwide, establishing the foundational grammar that would define comics as a medium.