Stepbrothers

Gene Carr's *Stepbrothers* strips the domestic comedy down to pure visual slapstick. Two rotund stepbrothers and a housemaid collide across nine panels in a narrative of escalating chaos: a fibbing scheme unravels, a closet mishap spills secrets, and accusations about food and character spiral into accusation and denial. Carr's economy of line and reliance on body language—the characters' proportions exaggerated for comic effect—builds gags through sequential action. The recurring cast and formulaic setup typified newspaper Sunday and daily comics of the early 1900s, formats that established the visual grammar later adopted by comic books: bordered panels, dialogue balloons, and character-driven humor that moved readers through time and consequence.