Kernel Cootie—Pa's New Straw Hat

This Sunday strip follows a familiar comic formula: a prized possession—here, a new straw hat—becomes the unwitting casualty of escalating domestic chaos. The five-panel sequence uses clear sight lines and action lines to track the hat's journey from proud display to destruction, with characters' expressions and postures conveying surprise and dismay. Speech balloons anchor dialogue while visual gags carry the humor. *Kernel Cootie* typified the newspaper comic strips of the 1920s, which established the visual vocabulary still used in comics today: sequential panels, recurring domestic characters, and physical comedy building toward a punchline. These strips, syndicated across hundreds of papers, reached millions daily and formed the direct ancestry of the comic book format.