Concerning Some Prehistoric Freaks

John B. Gruelle's Sunday comic strip features the "Whifflebroo," a boneless, laughing creature from the Miocene epoch. The strip demonstrates the visual conventions that shaped early newspaper comics: narrative text below illustrations, a single large panel with atmospheric landscape detail, and invented paleontological subjects treated with humor. Published during the era when Sunday newspaper supplements became the primary venue for sequential art, Gruelle's work exemplifies how comic artists combined typography, illustration, and absurdist character design to entertain readers before comic books emerged as a distinct format in the 1930s.