Petey Dink

This strip follows young Petey Dink through a seaside mishap. Over five panels, Petey attempts a diving stunt from a pier, warns an adult to watch, fumbles the execution, and ends up splashing into the water—a physical comedy sequence typical of newspaper comics of the 1910s. The strip employs the visual vocabulary already standard by 1917: panel borders to sequence action, speech balloons for dialogue, and exaggerated body language for humor. Recurring child characters like Petey populated the daily and Sunday pages, offering relatable scenarios for family newspaper audiences. By this era, newspaper comics had become a distinct medium, with artists developing the panel-based grammar and character continuity that would define the emerging comic book form.