Samson the Strong Man

This six-panel Sunday comic follows a strongman character through a comedic sequence involving a streetcar. The strip demonstrates early newspaper comic conventions: numbered panels with clear narrative flow, speech balloons advancing the gag, and exaggerated physical humor typical of vaudeville and stage comedy. The protagonist's superhuman strength creates the central joke—his attempts to help repeatedly backfire, demolishing the vehicle and its contents. The heavy crosshatching and ink work reflect the woodcut and letterpress printing methods of early-1900s newspaper production. Sunday pages like this established the visual vocabulary that would define the medium: sequential art with recurring characters, sight gags rendered through panel composition, and the marriage of text and image that newspapers carried into the emerging comic book form.