Sammy Spankem—He Gets Blamed for the Gardener's Temper

A six-panel Sunday strip following young Sammy through a classic setup-and-payoff sequence. The boy pesters a gardener tending plants near a window; the exasperated gardener chases him through successive panels, each showing escalating chaos—overturned pots, flying dirt, and destruction. The final panel reveals the gardener's anger redirected at Sammy's parents indoors. The strip employs the visual conventions established by newspaper comics in the 1900s: sequential panels advancing narrative time, speech balloons carrying dialogue, and a recurring child character whose mischief drives the humor. This format, born from Sunday newspaper supplements, became the foundation for comic strip storytelling and influenced the eventual development of comic books.