The Gumps

Sidney Smith's *The Gumps* follows a middle-class family through domestic adventures and fishing mishaps. This Sunday page demonstrates the visual grammar that shaped early comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters in varied situations, and slapstick humor built through panel-to-panel progression. The strip's narrative flow—from peaceful fishing to comic chaos—relies on the reader's ability to follow action across panels, a technique fundamental to the emerging medium. Launched in 1917, *The Gumps* was among the first strips to emphasize character development and running storylines, establishing the newspaper comic as a narrative form distinct from single-panel gags.