Pay Congressmen According to Ability

Will Rogers's Sunday comic strip combined editorial cartooning with sequential narrative art. Here Rogers illustrates his written commentary on Congressional salaries through a visual gag: a congressman is weighed and measured like a laborer, his "ability" to be assessed for pay. The strip's format—large illustration with integrated text columns and speech balloons—typified the newspaper Sunday page format that preceded modern comic books. Rogers used recurring visual scenarios and direct address to readers, establishing conventions the emerging comic medium would inherit and formalize.