Splinters by Steinigans

This Sunday strip follows a man and his dogs as they attempt to hunt ducks, only to be repeatedly outsmarted by their quarry. The narrative unfolds across six panels using the conventions that defined early newspaper comics: sequential art divided by borders, speech balloons advancing the story, and a cast of recurring animal characters. The humor derives from physical comedy and the reversal of expected outcomes—the hunters become the hunted. Steinigans employs heavy inking and expressive line work typical of the period, when newspaper Sunday pages served as the primary source of sequential narrative art in America. These strips, syndicated widely across publications, established the visual and storytelling grammar that would later define the comic book medium.