Nobody Loves a Fat Man

This Sunday comic strip follows a baseball game featuring a rotund player whose weight becomes the running gag. Across six panels, teammates and opponents react to his appearance and performance—"Ball one!" and "Ball two!" calls punctuate his clumsy fielding, while "Strike one—and I'm going home!" delivers the punchline as onlookers celebrate his exit. The strip exemplifies early newspaper comics: a single-gag narrative arc told through sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters in mid-action poses, and exaggerated caricature drawing. By 1909, Sunday funnies had established the visual language that would define comic books—panel borders, motion lines, and expressive typography working together to guide readers through time and space. Such strips, syndicated across papers nationwide, formed the direct ancestry of the medium.