From the exhibition
Old Opie Dilldock's Turn This Time
· 1908

This Sunday newspaper comic follows Uncle Opie and a group of children through a slapstick bath-time sequence. The strip demonstrates early comic page layout: a banner top panel sets up the premise, while subsequent tiers develop the gag through sequential action and reaction. Speech balloons carry dialogue and character voices. The artist uses exaggerated facial expressions and physical comedy typical of early-1900s newspaper comics. Such strips, appearing weekly in Sunday editions alongside daily continuities, were foundational to comic art's visual language—establishing panel progression, character recurrence, and the integration of text and image that would become the grammar of the medium.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain