From the exhibition
Kernel Cootie
· May 9, 1920

A three-panel Sunday strip depicting a golfer at ground level looking out a window at rain, then indoors watching it pour, finally declaring "I knew it! I knew it!" The humor rests on the golfer's self-deluding optimism about playing despite obvious weather. The strip exemplifies early newspaper comics: recurring character, sequential panel narrative, speech balloons advancing plot and gag simultaneously. By 1920, such Sunday pages had become standard features in American newspapers, establishing the visual vocabulary—panel borders, word balloons, expressive caricature—that would define comic books when they emerged as a distinct medium a decade later.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain