The Troubles of Dictionary Jaques

This Sunday comic strip by Carey follows a recurring character through six panels of escalating chaos centered on a stolen vase. Dictionary Jaques, a well-dressed gentleman, attempts to recover the missing object from various suspects—each panel advancing the narrative through sequential action and dialogue in speech balloons. The strip employs the visual conventions that had become standard in newspaper comics: bordered panels, exaggerated expressions, and slapstick physical humor. The Sunday pages of this era provided artists a larger canvas to develop character-driven comedy and establish the formal vocabulary of sequential storytelling that would define the medium.