From the exhibition
The Captain and the Kids
· November 1, 1925
R. Dirks's *The Captain and the Kids* ran as a Sunday newspaper strip, inheriting the broad slapstick tradition of early comics. This page shows the Captain and his young charges in a seaside boat adventure, with sight gags, physical comedy, and rapid scene changes across multiple panels. The strip exemplifies how Sunday comics—printed in color with larger formats than dailies—became the primary laboratory for visual storytelling in the 1920s. Speech balloons, panel borders, and recurring characters were the grammar Dirks and his contemporaries refined into the visual language that would define American comics for decades.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
