When a Feller Needs a Friend: "The Flu"

This single-panel comic by Clare Briggs depicts a bedridden figure suffering from influenza, declaring "Ma! I'm too hot!" while surrounded by remedies—bottles, mustard plasters, and patent medicines. The strip exemplifies early newspaper humor's reliance on visual gags and domestic situations. Briggs's economical linework and clear speech balloon establish conventions that defined comic strip grammar. Published during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, the strip mines contemporary anxieties for comedy. "When a Feller Needs a Friend" ran as a daily panel in American newspapers, reaching mass audiences through the Sunday and weekday comics pages that preceded the comic book format and established the medium's fundamental visual and narrative vocabulary.