Telling Tommy

This Sunday strip demonstrates the visual storytelling conventions that emerged in early newspaper comics. The layout employs multiple panels with speech balloons to advance narrative across time and space—techniques inherited from nineteenth-century illustrated journalism and refined by comic artists into a distinct language. A child's question about handshakes triggers an expansive middle panel depicting primitive hand customs, allowing the artist to deliver educational content through visual narrative rather than text alone. The recurring character Tommy anchors the strip's domestic comedy, while the contrast between modern parlor and historical scenes typifies the period's educational humor. Such strips, syndicated nationally across Sunday editions, shaped the visual grammar that would define comic books.