The House of Mirth

This Sunday newspaper comic strip demonstrates the visual conventions that newspaper cartoonists had established by the early 1900s: sequential panels arranged in a grid, speech balloons carrying dialogue, and a recurring cast of characters. The strip follows a slapstick narrative across six panels, using exaggerated poses and physical comedy typical of the period. The bold black linework and high-contrast printing reflect the technical constraints and aesthetic of Sunday color comics in major newspapers. By this era, the Sunday funny papers had become a dominant form of popular entertainment, establishing the visual grammar—panels, word balloons, character continuity—that would directly shape the emerging comic book format within two decades.