Minute Movies

This *Minute Movies* strip by Wheelan condenses a jewel-theft caper into six daily panels, each advancing the plot through visual action and dialogue. A stolen necklace moves from hand to hand—hidden in a pocket, recovered, exchanged again—while police and criminals cross paths in overlapping scenes. The strip demonstrates the essential grammar of newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring character types (officer, thief, fiancée), and a self-contained narrative arc. Published as a daily strip, *Minute Movies* belonged to the visual vocabulary that newspapers were perfecting in the 1920s, laying direct groundwork for the comic book page layouts that would emerge in the following decade.