The Meanest Man

Albert Payson Terhune's Sunday newspaper feature combined serialized narrative with the visual conventions pioneered in early newspaper comics: sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring characters. Here, Old Man Negley's cruelty toward a dog becomes the moral anchor of a longer story. Terhune, known for sentimental tales of animals, used the newspaper page's combination of text and illustration to develop character and plot across multiple installments, reflecting how the Sunday comics section functioned as a primary venue for both entertainment and moral instruction in the 1920s.