Private Conscience—He Isn't Popular at the Old Swimming Hole

This Sunday comic strip uses sequential panels and speech balloons to tell a moral tale: Jimmy refuses to throw rocks at a can with the other boys, citing conscience, only to be mocked by his peers. When he retrieves the can from the water to avoid littering, the other children jeer at his effort. The strip's visual grammar—distinct panel borders, expressive character poses, and word balloons anchoring dialogue—became the visual vocabulary of early newspaper comics. By the 1910s, Sunday supplements had established the comic strip as a distinct medium, with recurring characters and ongoing narratives driving readership alongside single-gag formats.