From the exhibition
Lucy and Sophie Say Goodbye
· 1905

This Sunday strip follows two characters through a sequence of increasingly physical goodbyes, escalating from conversation to a vigorous tussle. The comic employs sequential panels to build comic momentum—a visual strategy essential to early newspaper comics. Speech balloons carry dialogue while action unfolds across the grid, establishing the fundamental grammar that would define the medium. The strip's humor relies on visual exaggeration and slapstick, popular techniques in early-twentieth-century comic supplements. Such strips appeared in Sunday newspaper pages, which served as laboratories for experimenting with panel layouts, character types, and gag structures that later influenced comic book form and language.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain