From the exhibition
Reg'lar Fellers
· June 16, 1925
Gene Byrnes's *Reg'lar Fellers* follows a gang of neighborhood kids through daily misadventures. This strip exemplifies the visual language developing in newspaper comics: sequential panels advance narrative, speech balloons convey character voice, and recurring figures build reader familiarity. The four-panel layout moves from setup—boys mistaking thunder for a train—through escalating reactions to the punchline. Byrnes uses cross-hatching and dynamic linework to convey motion and emotion. Appearing in dailies and Sunday pages from 1917 through the 1950s, *Reg'lar Fellers* helped establish the comic strip as a distinct medium, influencing how visual storytelling would be read and understood.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
