From the exhibition
The Diary of Snubs, Our Dog
· 1924

A comic strip narrated from a dog's perspective, following the misadventures of Snubs as he encounters a rubber ball and attempts to retrieve it. The strip employs sequential panels with speech balloons to advance the narrative—visual techniques pioneered by newspaper comics in the early twentieth century. Each panel presents Snubs's observations and mishaps: the ball proves too large to carry, his owner's game ends abruptly, and his own efforts to catch it result in a sore mouth. The humor derives from the gap between canine intention and outcome. The strip's format exemplifies the newspaper Sunday page tradition, which established the visual grammar of comics: distinct panels, integrated text and image, and recurring characters that sustained reader interest across weeks and years.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain