Ophelia by Dwiggins

Dwiggins's *Ophelia* exemplifies the full-page Sunday comic format that dominated newspapers in the early 1900s. The strip employs multiple overlapping scenes connected by sight lines and speech balloons—visual techniques fundamental to sequential art. Characters navigate a vertical composition packed with gags: a circus scene, a gravedigger, patches being applied overhead, and a farewell inscription. The dense layout, exaggerated anatomy, and rapid-fire dialogue established conventions that shaped comic strip vocabulary. Dwiggins's work demonstrates how newspaper comics served as the direct precursor to modern comic books, teaching readers to follow narrative through panel arrangement and establishing visual shorthand that cartoonists still use today.