The Troubles of Dictionary Jaques

This Sunday comic strip by Carey follows Jacques, a pedantic character whose obsession with dictionary definitions creates chaos across six panels. Each episode demonstrates visual slapstick: Jacques consults his dictionary for literal meanings, misapplying words to domestic situations—laundry mishaps, household fires, and domestic disputes—with escalating physical comedy. The strip employs the visual vocabulary now standard to comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, exaggerated character expressions, motion lines, and escalating gags that rely on both text and image. The recurring character Jacques anchors episodic humor typical of early newspaper comic pages, which served as training grounds for the language and techniques that would define the comic book medium.