Hip! Hip! Hooray! for Tidy Teddy—He Skips a Bath

This Sunday newspaper comic employs six panels to chronicle a child's schemes to avoid bathing. The strip demonstrates early comic art conventions: sequential panels advancing a single narrative, speech balloons carrying dialogue, and a recurring child protagonist. The artist uses exaggerated poses and facial expressions to convey comic action—spilled bathwater, flying objects, and chaotic chases. By the early 1900s, Sunday newspaper comics had become essential to circulation wars. These strips, drawn for mass audiences, established visual storytelling techniques—panel layout, pacing, character types—that would define the emerging comic book medium. The humor relies on physical comedy and situation, requiring minimal text and making strips accessible to diverse readers.