From the exhibition
The Goats Take Martha Home
· Early 1900s

This comic strip follows a family of goats on a chaotic journey to return their human companion Martha to her home. Told across six panels, the narrative unfolds through sight gags and physical comedy: the goats initially mistake Martha for a kitty, then stampede when she attempts to ride them, and finally wreak havoc on a farm before delivering her safely home. The strip employs the visual vocabulary of newspaper comics—sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring characters—that became foundational to the medium. The loose, energetic linework and slapstick humor are characteristic of early-1900s Sunday supplement strips, which entertained mass audiences and established the visual grammar that would define comic books for generations.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain