ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Great Caesar's Ghost!

· March 22, 1914

Great Caesar's Ghost!
A nine-panel Sunday comic strip built on wordplay and physical comedy. A woman in a toga addresses a man at a Roman bath, triggering a series of misunderstandings around the phrase "under the Basil." The humor escalates through repetition and escalating confusion, with the punchline hinging on a homophones—a staple of early comic strip gags. The strip demonstrates the formal language of newspaper comics established by 1914: uniform panel grids, speech balloons, expressive linework, and the fast-paced comedic timing that made Sunday pages and daily strips the visual foundation for the comic book medium that would emerge in the following decades.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain