Telling Tommy

A Sunday comic strip by Pim employs the educational humor typical of 1920s newspaper comics. Tommy asks why American football is called "pigskin," launching into a four-panel explanation of ancient ball games, Roman developments, and rugby's influence on the modern sport. The strip demonstrates the period's approach to comics as vehicles for casual instruction alongside entertainment. Through panel sequence, speech balloons, and recurring child characters, strips like this established visual conventions that would define the comic book medium. The Sunday pages of this era—appearing in newspapers nationwide—functioned as laboratories for the visual storytelling grammar that later structured comic books.