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From the exhibition

The Newlyweds

· June 11, 1911

The Newlyweds
McManus's *The Newlyweds* follows a young married couple navigating domestic life through visual comedy. This Sunday strip demonstrates the formal grammar emerging in early newspaper comics: distinct panels advance the narrative, speech balloons carry dialogue, and recurring characters anchor continuity. The strip's humor derives from situation and social interaction rather than gag lines alone. Published in the Sunday funnies—the color comics section that predated bound comic books—*The Newlyweds* exemplifies how newspaper strips of the 1910s established the visual language and serialized character development that would define comic books as a medium.

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