Nobody by Meek

This comic strip demonstrates the visual vocabulary that defined early newspaper comics. Two panels establish a setup-and-punchline structure: an officer reports an exciting discovery at the South Pole to his superior, who instructs him to look after the discoverer. The reveal shows "Nobody"—rendered as an invisible figure visible only through his effects—justifying the title's wordplay. The strip employs the conventions that became standard: panel borders, speech balloons, recurring character types (pompous official, ordinary man), and economical ink line work. Newspaper comics of this era, appearing in Sunday supplements and dailies, functioned as the direct precursor to comic books, establishing the sequential art grammar and character-driven humor that would define the medium.