I Always Say— (Sez Gracie Allen)

This single-panel comic presents a domestic observation in the voice of Gracie Allen, the vaudeville and radio personality. A man holds up a portrait of himself, while the caption delivers the punchline: a mother's unpaid emotional investment cannot be credited or collected, even when her son takes all the credit for his own success. The style—simple line work, bold silhouette, expressive caricature—typifies the newspaper comic strip format that emerged in the early twentieth century. Such daily and Sunday strips became the laboratories where artists developed speech balloons, recurring characters, and visual economy. These newspaper comics preceded and directly shaped the comic book medium that would follow.