Joe and Asbestos

A slapstick Sunday strip following Joe's misadventures with his animal companion Asbestos. Here, a crash through a mirror sends Joe careening through a domestic space in a chain of physical gags—a comedic formula perfected in the newspaper pages of the 1920s. The strip employs sequential panels with speech balloons to propel narrative action, techniques pioneered by cartoonists working in dailies and Sunday supplements. By the mid-1920s, such recurring-character strips had become staples of American newspapers, establishing the visual and storytelling conventions that would define the comic book medium when it emerged a decade later.