From the exhibition
Jerry on the Job
· November 20, 1916

A daily newspaper strip following Jerry, a railroad worker navigating workplace mishaps and office politics. This four-panel sequence uses speech balloons and sequential framing to convey Jerry's attempts to manage a miscommunication about railroad schedules. The strip employs the visual conventions emerging in early comics: distinct panel borders, exaggerated character expressions, and rapid dialogue to build comedic timing. Jerry on the Job exemplifies the comic strip's growth as a narrative form in the 1910s, when recurring characters in newspapers established the visual vocabulary and pacing that would shape comic books and graphic storytelling for decades to come.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain