Salesman Sam

A three-panel Sunday strip following Sam's misadventure when he considers adopting an alternate identity to escape his wife. The first panel shows Sam daydreaming in a hospital setting about becoming "Caesar Heathcliffe Montmarte." In the second, he adopts the persona at his front door before his wife appears. The third panel depicts the consequences: Percy Payne arrives unexpectedly, Sam falls ill with the flu, and his wife discovers his deception. The strip demonstrates the visual grammar developed in newspaper comics: recurring characters, speech balloons, sequential panel narrative, and slapstick humor. Such Sunday pages and daily strips were the primary training ground for comic art before the emergence of the comic book industry.