Terry and Tacks

By Joe Farren, this Sunday strip follows two young characters through a swimming misadventure. The narrative unfolds across twelve panels: Terry and Tacks encounter a pool, attempt to teach swimming, and tumble into increasingly chaotic situations. Farren employs the visual vocabulary developed by newspaper cartoonists in the 1890s—sequential panels, speech balloons, and physical comedy—to convey action and pacing. The strip's humor relies on slapstick and situation rather than wordplay, typical of the era's newspaper comics that appeared alongside news and advertisements. Such strips were the direct predecessors to comic books, establishing panel layout, character continuity, and the marriage of image and text that would define the medium.