As Hamlet, Mr. Wad is a Fine Falstaff

This Sunday comic strip follows Mr. Wad through a theatrical mishap. The strip establishes character through sequential panels and overlapping dialogue balloons—visual conventions that newspaper comics had refined by the 1910s. Wad, cast as Falstaff in a stage production, stumbles through increasingly absurd situations across five panels. The artist uses exaggerated figures and slapstick action to propel the gag forward, relying on readers' familiarity with both Shakespeare and vaudeville comedy. By the 1910s, newspaper Sunday pages like this had become laboratories for comic storytelling, developing the panel layouts and speech balloon techniques that would define the emerging comic book medium.