The Misadventures of Sammy Small

This Sunday comic strip follows Sammy Small through eight sequential panels as he attempts to hide a rat in a police station, leading to escalating chaos. The strip employs the visual vocabulary now standard to comics: panel gutters that control pacing, speech balloons anchored to speakers, and a recurring protagonist whose misdeeds drive the narrative. By 1904, Sunday newspaper comics had become a mass medium, with artists developing the formal language—close-ups, action lines, exaggerated expressions—that would define the medium. Sammy's scheme unfolds through clear cause and effect, each panel advancing the gag toward its inevitable reveal, demonstrating how sequential art could tell a complete story in a fixed space.