From the exhibition
Little Jimmy
· February 22, 1923

This strip follows young Jimmy through a simple domestic crisis: his loose tooth. The narrative unfolds across four panels with clean linework typical of 1920s newspaper comics. A concerned adult explains tooth-pulling technique; Jimmy attempts the old string-and-doorframe method with a companion, succeeding with a loud "CRACK"; the adult later discovers Jimmy's tooth was never actually loose, having misunderstood the original instruction. The recurring child protagonist, adult authority figure, and sight-gag humor were staples of newspaper dailies and Sunday pages that established comic strip conventions—panel sequence, speech balloons, and character consistency—which directly shaped the emerging comic book medium.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain