The Gumps

A domestic comedy strip centered on Andy Gump and his wife Min, shown here debating household finances over breakfast. The strip's visual grammar—sequential panels, speech balloons, recurring characters in everyday situations—became foundational to American comics. Sidney Smith's *The Gumps*, which launched in 1917, pioneered the narrative structure that newspapers would later adapt into comic books. Below, *Old Doc Yak* demonstrates how strips could stack additional gag sequences on Sunday pages, maximizing entertainment across the full page. These newspaper strips were the direct ancestors of the comic book format, establishing both the artistic conventions and the serial storytelling that defined the medium's development.