Splinters by Steinigans

A six-panel strip following two dogs who trade shoes for food and clothing with a poor man. The narrative unfolds through sequential panels with speech balloons—visual conventions that newspaper comics pioneered in the early twentieth century. Steinigans employs bold black silhouettes and simple line work typical of the era's Sunday newspaper pages, where comic strips generated mass readership before the comic book medium existed. The strip's gentle humor hinges on character interaction and circumstance rather than verbal punchlines, demonstrating how early comics relied on visual storytelling and panel-to-panel progression to convey narrative and comedic timing to diverse audiences.