The Importance of Mr. Peewee, the Great Little Man

A four-panel Sunday comic featuring Mr. Peewee, a diminutive character at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, comparing small men to great historical figures. The strip uses speech balloons to deliver rapid-fire jokes about stature and achievement—Napoleon, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon again—each panel escalating the gags with visual sight gags: 1,000 persons broiled alive, trains dropping into rivers, ears wiggling. The sequential panel layout, expressive silhouettes, and dialogue-driven humor exemplify the Sunday newspaper comic strip format that emerged in the 1890s, establishing conventions of recurring characters and comic timing that would define the medium.