Salesman Sam

A Sunday strip by Small following Sam, a fast-talking salesman navigating domestic and commercial mishaps. The narrative unfolds across five panels with Sam's wife as antagonist to his schemes: he complains about her teeth-brushing habits, tries to escape her complaints by heading to the office, gets caught in a domestic dispute over evening plans, and ends pursued up the stairs. The strip employs the visual conventions solidified in newspaper comics of the 1920s—sequential panels, speech balloons, exaggerated gestures, and recurring characters in episodic plots. Sam's character type—the scheming, motormouth salesman—was stock comedy material adapted from vaudeville and popular stage humor into the emerging newspaper comic strip form.