From the exhibition
Our Antediluvian Ancestors
· July 8, 1918

A Sunday newspaper comic strip depicting cavemen in a mock legal dispute. The strip employs multiple panels to advance its narrative: a plaintiff explains a lawsuit over bear skins to an adjournment notice, while other characters react with concern about the defendant's whereabouts. The artwork uses bold linework and expressive character poses typical of early-20th-century newspaper comics. Speech balloons carry dialogue across sequential panels—a visual convention that became foundational to the medium. This strip exemplifies how Sunday pages mixed prehistoric humor with contemporary legal satire, entertaining readers through both sight gags and verbal wit while demonstrating the panel-based narrative structure that would define comic strip and comic book language for decades to come.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain