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From the exhibition

Mamma's Angel Child Punishes a Band of Injuns

· August 1, 1909

Mamma's Angel Child Punishes a Band of Injuns
This Sunday page from *The Chicago Sunday Tribune* follows a mischievous child through six panels of escalating chaos. The strip employs the visual conventions pioneered in newspaper comics: sequential panels arranged in grid formation, speech balloons carrying dialogue and thought, and a recurring protagonist whose exaggerated expressions and physical comedy drive the narrative. The artist uses bold black ink lines and dynamic figure poses to convey rapid action and slapstick humor. By 1909, the Sunday newspaper comic had become a major attraction in metropolitan dailies, drawing audiences through character-based humor and demonstrating how the combination of image and text could sustain narrative momentum across multiple panels—techniques that would foundational to the comic book medium.

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