From the exhibition
Oh! Margy!
· December 20, 1925
John Held, Jr.'s *Oh! Margy!* exemplifies the Sunday comic strip format that dominated early twentieth-century newspapers. The three-panel layout unfolds a Christmas gag: a girl hangs her stocking by the fire in hopes of Santa's visit; the next panel reveals Santa observing her "jolly well filled" stocking; the final panel shows her discovering her gifts before Christmas morning arrives. Held's loose, expressive ink line and flapper-era character design reflect the Jazz Age aesthetic that made him a celebrated cartoonist. The strip demonstrates how newspaper comics developed visual conventions—sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring characters—that became foundational to the emerging comic book medium.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
