The "Hurry Up" New Yorker No. 17—When He Rushes for the Harlem Express

Maurice Ketten's comic strip follows a thin, sharply-dressed protagonist racing through New York City to catch the Harlem Express train. Across nine panels, the character collides with lampposts, collapsing scaffolding, and street workers in slapstick succession, each mishap punctuated by dialogue balloons expressing frustration at missing his train. The strip exemplifies early newspaper comic conventions: sequential panel layout, recurring character, visual gags tied to urban life. Published in the Sunday supplement era when comic strips were becoming standard newspaper features, *Hurry Up* demonstrates how the medium translated vaudeville's physical comedy into sequential art, establishing visual grammar—action lines, impact effects, exaggerated proportions—that would define comics for decades.