The Gumps

A Sunday strip from *The Gumps*, one of the first narrative comic strips to feature continuing characters and domestic storylines. Here, young Billy puzzles an adult visitor with questions about how to light a fire—a setup that plays on the child's literalist logic against adult assumption. The strip's nine-panel layout, speech balloons, and sequential visual storytelling exemplify the newspaper comic format that emerged in the early 1920s. Created by Sidney Smith, *The Gumps* pioneered the family-centered humor strip and demonstrated that newspapers could sustain serialized narratives through recurring characters across daily and Sunday editions, establishing a model that shaped comic strip and later comic book structure.