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From the exhibition

Newlyweds

· January 26, 1908

Newlyweds
This Sunday comic strip follows a young married couple and their infant son through domestic situations. The husband attempts to teach the baby words—"brain," "Ferguson," "uncle"—while the mother and visiting relatives look on. The strip employs the sequential panel structure and speech balloons that became standard to newspaper comics, with six panels progressing through a single comedic scenario. The baby's nonsense response "da-da" undercuts the father's earnest efforts, a gag rooted in observation of actual child development. Recurring family characters and home-centered humor made strips like this popular features in Sunday newspaper supplements, establishing the domestic comedy as a foundational genre of the medium.

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