The Newlyweds and Their Baby

George McManus's *The Newlyweds and Their Baby* appeared in newspapers as a Sunday comic strip, establishing visual conventions that shaped early cartooning. The strip follows a young couple navigating domestic life with their infant, told across six panels using speech balloons, varied staging, and expressive line work. McManus employs sequential narrative to build gags—here, a simple joke about parental fatigue and the baby's vocal development. The strip's layout—multiple tiers, varying panel sizes, sight lines that guide the reader—reflects the emerging grammar of newspaper comics, where artists developed techniques to control pacing and emphasis. By the early 20th century, such strips were common Sunday features, their accessibility and humor making them foundational to the visual storytelling that later defined comic books.