Salesman Sam

Salesman Sam, a daily strip by Small, follows the misadventures of its titular protagonist through four panels of escalating chaos. Here, Sam's morning bath with Bertha—apparently a large animal—devolves from domestic routine into slapstick pandemonium. The strip employs the visual conventions established by newspaper comics: sequential panels advancing narrative time, speech balloons carrying dialogue and internal monologue, and exaggerated character expressions. Running in newspapers from the 1920s onward, such strips trained readers to parse image sequences as storytelling, establishing the visual grammar that would become foundational to comic books. The strip's humor relies on physical gags and situational comedy, hallmarks of the era's popular entertainment adapted for the comics page.