From the exhibition
The Diary of Snubs, Our Dog
· 1925

This Sunday newspaper strip presents a dog's-eye view of domestic life through first-person narration and sequential panels. Snubs, an anthropomorphic terrier, recounts his afternoon adventures: a trick played on himself, encounters with neighborhood children and a man distributing handbills, an attempted con on his boss, and a chance meeting with a boy who invites him to see a sea picture at the Royal. The strip employs the visual conventions that defined early newspaper comics: bordered panels, speech balloons containing the dog's thoughts, consistent character design, and sight gags built on the contrast between animal behavior and human social situations. Such strips, appearing in Sunday editions nationwide, established the formal and narrative grammar that would become foundational to the comic book medium.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain