The Gumps

Sidney Smith's *The Gumps* established the domestic comedy strip as a newspaper staple. This Sunday page exemplifies the strip's visual formula: sequential panels advancing a single gag, speech balloons containing dialogue and thought, and recurring characters—here, the scheming father Andy and his suspicious wife Min. Smith's clean line work and economical compositions made complex narratives legible at newspaper size. *The Gumps* ran from 1917 to 1959 and influenced generations of comic artists. The strip pioneered the vocabulary of modern comics: bordered panels, word balloons integrated with image, and serialized humor that could extend across multiple installments, bridging the gap between newspaper funnies and the comic books that would follow.