Their Only Child

This Sunday comic from the Washington Post tracks a single narrative across twelve panels: a child's escalating demands for toys and treats, met by a weary father's reluctant indulgence. The strip employs sequential visual storytelling—recurring characters, speech balloons anchoring each beat, and panel-by-panel progression—that became the standard grammar of newspaper comics. By 1913, the Sunday pages had evolved into a primary medium for visual narrative, where artists developed the formal vocabulary (gutters, perspective, gesture, timing) that would define the medium for decades. The domestic humor and exasperated parental authority reflect the era's popular comedy, while the formal sophistication demonstrates how quickly the newspaper strip matured as an art form.