How Do They Do It?

This Sunday comic strip demonstrates the visual conventions that shaped early newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, silhouettes for atmospheric effect, and a narrative that builds across six frames. The strip's framing device—characters discussing how great minds solve problems—allows the artist to pile unlikely scenarios atop one another: an archimedes studying geometry, Galileo observing the sky, Napoleon planning campaigns, and layered conversations about history and method. The humor depends on readers' recognition of famous figures and their pursuits. By 1917, this visual language of comics was fully established in American newspapers, where Sunday strips appeared in color and dailies in black-and-white, reaching millions of readers before any bound comic book existed.