From the exhibition
The Pranks of Pantomime Pete
· December 24, 1905
A silent-comedy Sunday strip featuring Pete, a mischievous clown in top hat and baggy costume, tormenting a well-dressed gentleman with soap, fire, and physical gags. Each panel advances the joke through sequential action: Pete offers soap, the man washes, chaos erupts. The strip exemplifies early newspaper comics' debt to vaudeville and slapstick theater. Recurring characters and visual gags told through panel progression were still novel in 1905, when Sunday funnies drove newspaper circulation. The wordless format and exaggerated pantomime made strips like this internationally readable, establishing visual humor as a medium distinct from text-driven cartoons.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
