Mr. Happihome by Walter Wellman

This domestic comedy strip follows a husband navigating married life through six sequential panels. Wellman employs the visual conventions emerging in early newspaper comics: distinct rectangular panels, speech balloons advancing narrative, and a recurring cast of characters. The humor derives from marital miscommunication and social expectation—a husband's attempt to please his wife spirals into domestic chaos. The strip exemplifies the Sunday supplement format that established comic narrative as a distinct medium, distinct from single-panel gags. These serial strips, appearing regularly in newspapers nationwide, created the template for sequential art and recurring characterization that would define twentieth-century comics.