Polite on Both Sides

This two-panel comic strip demonstrates the visual conventions that became standard in newspaper humor: distinct panels, speech balloons, and exaggerated character drawing. The top panel introduces a "suspicious stranger" interrupting two men; the bottom panel shows the stranger's elaborate excuse. The gag relies on escalating politeness and absurdist logic—a structure common to the newspaper comics that proliferated in the 1890s-1910s. These daily and Sunday strips, published in mass-circulation papers, established the panel layout, lettering styles, and sequential narrative techniques that would define the comic book medium when it emerged in the 1930s.