The Gimlet Club

A four-panel gag strip featuring recurring characters in a barroom setting. The humor turns on rapid-fire dialogue about tariffs and weather, with physical comedy and exaggerated facial expressions. The strip exemplifies the Sunday newspaper comic format that emerged in the 1890s: multiple panels advancing a simple joke, speech balloons containing character voices, and consistent character types. By 1909, strips like this had become staples of American newspapers, establishing visual conventions—panel sequencing, word-picture integration, comedic timing through layout—that would define comic books when they emerged in the 1930s.