Keeping Up With the Joneses

Pop Momand's *Keeping Up With the Joneses* ran as a daily strip and Sunday page, following the social anxieties of the McGinis family as they pursued status symbols to match their neighbors. This Sunday installment shows the family's competitive attempts at hunting and outdoor sports—scenes of physical comedy delivered through sequential panels and speech balloons. The strip exemplified the newspaper comic's visual grammar: recurring characters, action flowing across panels, and gags rooted in contemporary consumer culture. Popularized in syndication nationwide, *Keeping Up* influenced the visual storytelling conventions that would define comic books, while its premise—competitive consumption and social performance—became archetypal for American comics and advertising satire.