The Explorigator: They Visit Catamarinkhum Cave in the Moon

This Sunday comic page from *The Call* (San Francisco) exemplifies the visual storytelling conventions emerging in early newspaper comics. The strip follows explorers navigating an otherworldly lunar cave through sequential panels that establish setting, escalate action, and develop gags through dialogue balloons and expressive figure drawing. The grid layout and varied panel sizes—from tall vertical frames to horizontal sequences—demonstrate the visual grammar newspapers were standardizing in the 1900s. By serializing fantastical narratives with recurring characters across multiple panels, Sunday pages like this one established the foundational language of comics, a form distinct from single-panel newspaper cartoons and a direct precursor to the comic books that would follow.