From the exhibition
Freckles and His Friends
· January 27, 1925

A Sunday comic strip following Freckles and companions as they navigate New Year's resolutions. The four-panel layout demonstrates the visual grammar of 1920s newspaper comics: sequential panels advancing a gag, speech balloons carrying dialogue, and recurring child characters in domestic situations. The strip's humor derives from the gap between stated intentions and immediate behavior—Freckles claims he'll reform, only to reveal he's already broken his promises. Drawn in the cartoonist's characteristic style, with bold linework and expressive character faces, the strip exemplifies the daily and Sunday page format that established comic strip narrative as a distinct medium, preceding the collected comic books that would emerge in the 1930s.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain