Salesman Sam

A Sunday page from *Salesman Sam*, the daily and weekly strip that ran from 1921 to 1935. The comic follows Sam, a traveling salesman, through episodic adventures with recurring characters and gags. This strip exemplifies the newspaper comic's visual vocabulary: multiple panels advancing a continuous narrative, speech balloons anchored to speakers, and sight gags dependent on sequential art. The crowded, energetic compositions and exaggerated character work typify the style that emerged from newspaper comic strips—the primary format where cartooning's modern grammar took shape before the comic book industry adapted these techniques for the pulp market.