Mr. Wad Starts His Spring Baseball Training With the Usual Result

This Sunday strip follows Mr. Wad through six panels of chaotic baseball instruction. The rotund protagonist attempts to teach sliding, base-running, and fielding, only to end each lesson in physical disaster—collisions, tumbles, and comic violence. The strip employs the visual conventions that defined early newspaper comics: sequential panels advancing a gag, speech balloons carrying dialogue and sound effects, and a recurring character whose predictable misfortune drives the humor. The exaggerated, elastic linework and slapstick staging reflect the style that newspapers had refined since the 1890s, when the comic strip became the Sunday page's dominant feature. Such strips were foundational to American comics, establishing the panel-based grammar and character-driven narrative that would shape the medium for decades.