Ted's Object Spelling Lesson—H-O-S-E and W-A-T-E-R

This comic strip uses sequential panels and speech balloons to follow a boy named Ted learning to spell through physical objects and discovery. Each panel builds on the last: Ted finds a hose, plays with it, gets soaked, and learns that W-A-T-E-R spells water. The strip exemplifies early newspaper comics' visual narrative—repeated characters, simple gags dependent on word-and-image coordination, and the four-panel grid format that shaped Sunday comics. By the 1900s, newspaper Sunday pages had become laboratories for sequential art, establishing the panel structure, balloon placement, and sight-gag timing that would define the medium for decades.