Pranks of the Fourpaws

Drawn by W. L. Wells with verses by C. P. McDonald, this Sunday strip features a mule, a bear, and a horse—animal characters locked in a chain of comic misadventures. The six-panel grid shows slapstick action: the mule outwits a tied-up bear by rolling on the ground, tumbling both animals into chaos, then later feigning injury to trick the bear into another pratfall. The strip relies on sequential visual gags and animal personality—the mule's cunning versus the bear's frustrated strength—a formula that earned regular space in newspapers. The detailed pen-and-ink style and narrative caption boxes below each panel typify the Sunday funny pages of the era, when newspaper comics established the visual language of sequential art: recurring characters, panel borders, and dialogue balloons that would define the medium.