Mr. E. Z. Mark Buys Copper

This four-panel Sunday strip follows a con artist's scheme to sell copper stock to a gullible stranger. The narrative unfolds through sequential art with speech balloons and clear panel divisions—visual conventions that were becoming standard in newspaper comics of the early 1900s. The "E.Z. Mark" series used recurring characters and situational humor to sustain reader interest across multiple installments. By this period, the Sunday funny pages had become a crucial testing ground for the visual language of comics: distinct frames, overlapping dialogue, and exaggerated character expressions that conveyed emotion and action at a glance. Such strips helped establish the foundational grammar that would define the medium for decades.