Thimble Theatre

A daily comic strip from King Features Syndicate featuring a con-artist plot played across six panels. The well-dressed Hamgravy approaches a one-armed man with a sympathetic scheme—offering to work on an artificial hand if the victim provides cash. The mark falls for the ruse, surrendering money. Hamgravy then "helps" by handing over a roll, which the desperate man accepts gratefully. The final panel reveals the punchline: the "roll" is merely bread, leaving the victim literally and figuratively empty-handed. The strip demonstrates the visual grammar of newspaper comics—sequential panels, speech balloons, and a recurring cast of scheming characters—that formed the foundation of comic strip storytelling in the early twentieth century.