Sammy Spankem

This Sunday strip by W. Werner follows a mischievous child and his exasperated parents through six panels of escalating chaos. Sammy's vocalizations provoke Pa's physical retaliation, the central gag recurring across each panel with visual variation. The strip employs the fundamental vocabulary of newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, a recurring protagonist, and slapstick action that builds comedically. By 1913, such strips had become staples of the Sunday funny pages, establishing the visual and narrative grammar that would define the emerging medium of comic books—discrete panels, dialogue containment, character consistency, and sight gags driving narrative forward.