From the exhibition
Newlyweds by George McManus
· 1912

McManus's *Newlyweds* follows a young married couple navigating domestic life through six connected panels. The strip employs the visual conventions that defined early newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters in familiar settings, and sight gags built on physical comedy and marital misunderstanding. McManus's precise draftsmanship and ability to convey character emotion through posture and expression exemplify the technical sophistication newspaper cartoonists achieved in the 1910s. The Sunday page format allowed for elaborate setups and payoffs impossible in the daily strip, making such pages essential training grounds for the visual storytelling that would establish comic books as a distinct medium.
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