The Omnibus Boy Believes Revenge Is Sweet

A six-panel Sunday comic strip from Tribune Company, Chicago. An omnibus boy wages escalating pranks against a fastidious gentleman passenger—flicking crumbs onto his coat, then gluing molasses to the table cloth, and finally dumping the entire table's contents across the man's lap. The strip employs the visual vocabulary that defined early newspaper comics: sequential panels advancing a narrative gag, dialogue balloons capturing colloquial speech with phonetic spelling, and a recurring cast of stock characters. By 1908, the Sunday funny pages had become essential newspaper content, establishing the formal and thematic conventions that would anchor the comic book medium for decades.