The Gumps

Sidney Smith's *The Gumps* ran in newspapers from 1917 to 1959, pioneering the domestic comedy strip. Here, Andy Gump's schemes to acquire a fur coat reveal Smith's mastery of sequential visual storytelling: clear panel progression, expressive figural drawing, and dialogue balloons that advance both plot and character. The strip's recurring cast and serialized narratives established templates for comic strips and early comic books. Smith's panel composition—varying shot scales, strategic use of negative space—shaped how cartoonists would frame stories for decades. *The Gumps* demonstrated that newspaper comics could sustain ongoing narratives with recognizable characters, moving beyond simple gag formats.