From the exhibition
Herr Spiegleburger Chokes Off Dot Tune Undt Hisself Mit It
· July 24, 1904

This Sunday strip follows a rotund German character through six panels of escalating chaos. A simple domestic scene—a man singing at a window—spirals into slapstick mayhem involving a giant mechanical tube, fleeing children, and physical comedy played across urban space. The artist employs sequential narrative panels with speech balloons and expressive caricature to track the gag's progression. The recurring character and German-dialect humor reflect the newspaper comic strip's early conventions, when Sunday pages in major dailies showcased visual comedy and ethnic comedy types. This format—multiple panels telling a single joke—became foundational to comic book storytelling.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain