ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Doc Tries to Emulate Daniel

· 1913

Doc Tries to Emulate Daniel
This strip by Arnot follows a recurring character through a sequence of physical comedy across five panels. A man attempts to mimic a child's antics, progressing from mimicry to escalating chaos—culminating in a crash through a window. The strip exemplifies early newspaper comic conventions: sequential panels with speech balloons advancing a simple joke, a recognizable protagonist, and slapstick gags played for laughs. By the 1910s, daily newspaper strips had become vehicles for visual storytelling, establishing the panel-based grammar that would define comic books. Artists refined methods of conveying action, timing, and character reaction through panel flow and expressive drawing.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain