Noble Mr. Wad! He's Going to Swear Off on Smoking on New Year's!

This Sunday comic strip follows Mr. Wad's New Year's resolution through four panels of escalating physical comedy. The strip employs the visual conventions that defined early newspaper comics: sequential panels advancing a narrative, speech balloons carrying dialogue, and a recurring character facing domestic circumstances. Wad's ambitious pledge to quit smoking—announced with enthusiasm—crumbles spectacularly as he encounters temptation and chaos, culminating in a desperate conclusion. The artist uses slapstick staging and exaggerated poses to drive the humor across the page, a technique essential to the visual grammar that newspapers had developed during the first two decades of the twentieth century.