ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Grimes's Goat

· January 14, 1912

Grimes's Goat
A Sunday newspaper comic strip following the misadventures of a mischievous goat and its owner. The narrative unfolds across eight panels with sequential action: Grimes promises his son a suit from the Blue Front Clothing Store if he retrieves the goat; the animal's antics create chaos throughout town—knocking over a cart, disrupting street commerce, and eventually leading to an electric rail accident. The strip employs period conventions of early comic storytelling: speech balloons for dialogue, consistent character recognition, and panel-to-panel continuity that guides readers through cause-and-effect gags. The artwork uses bold inking and crosshatching typical of early-twentieth-century newspaper comics, when the Sunday pages and daily strips served as the primary training ground for visual narrative techniques that would define the emerging comic book medium.

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