From the exhibition
Old Doc Yak
· February 4, 1917
Old Doc Yak, a bearded goat in a vest, teaches his small sidekick a harsh lesson in property damage and punishment. The strip uses sequential panels with speech balloons to build narrative: the boy breaks items in Doc's garage, Doc devises increasingly painful punishments—hammering nails, pulling them out—meant to instill fear and obedience. The artwork employs bold inking and expressive caricature typical of early newspaper comics. This Sunday page exemplifies how comic strips of the 1910s combined recurring characters, sight gags, and panel progression to tell stories in installments. Such strips, appearing daily and weekly in newspapers, established the visual language and formal structure that would define comic books.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
