Which Hand Wins?

Nell Brinkley's Sunday comic strip demonstrates the visual conventions that shaped early comic art: multiple panels, speech balloons, and exaggerated character types arranged for sequential reading. The strip's central figure—an elaborately dressed woman with elaborate hair and ornamentation—faces two suitors in patterned suits, each representing a competing claim: wealth and romantic love. Brinkley was among the first artists to establish a consistent female protagonist across newspaper installments, pioneering the recurring character format essential to comic strips. Her intricate pen work and decorative style influenced the aesthetic of Sunday supplement pages, which served as the immediate precursor to the comic book medium.