Percy

This Sunday newspaper strip follows Percy, a mischievous child character whose schemes invariably backfire. The six-panel sequence shows Percy attempting to weigh himself on a scale, then enlisting neighborhood children to help move it indoors—a plan that devolves into slapstick chaos as the scale tips, children tumble, and Percy ends up at the center of the disaster. By 1912, the Sunday comics page had become a laboratory for visual storytelling. Percy exemplifies the newspaper strip's core grammar: recurring characters, sequential panels advancing a gag, speech balloons carrying dialogue, and escalating physical comedy. Artists of this era established conventions—panel borders, expressive caricature, action lines—that would define comic art for generations. The strip's simple premise and wordplay reflect humor pitched to both children and adults, the essential audience for the color Sunday supplements that drove newspaper circulation.