Old Doc Yak Is Something of a Lion Tamer—What?

A six-panel Sunday strip featuring Old Doc Yak, a goat character in early newspaper comics. The strip follows a slapstick sequence: Doc boasts of taming lions, attempts to demonstrate with a caged beast, and suffers comic consequences when the animal turns violent. The strip exemplifies the visual vocabulary that newspapers pioneered—distinct panel borders, speech balloons, recurring animal-character protagonists, and escalating physical gags. Drawn in the rapid, expressive ink style of 1910s dailies and Sundays, this format directly preceded the comic book. The humor relies on visual storytelling and character expression rather than text, establishing conventions that shaped sequential art for decades.