How Do They Do It?

This Sunday comic strip demonstrates the visual language that newspaper cartoonists had perfected by the 1910s: multiple panels arranged in grid form, speech balloons advancing narrative and gags, and sequential action revealing humor through timing. The strip follows a prize-winning pair of mining engineers—one boasting of their partnership, the other skeptical of the arrangement—through absurd scenarios that play on class anxiety and workplace hierarchy. The cartoonist uses exaggerated proportions, dynamic postures, and clever panel transitions to build comic momentum, techniques that would become foundational to the emerging comic book medium. Sunday comics like this were where American visual storytelling came of age, reaching millions of readers and establishing conventions still in use today.