Love's Labor Lost

Nell Brinkley's Sunday comic employs the visual conventions pioneered in the 1890s newspaper strips: multiple panels, speech balloons, and sequential narrative. Here, a classical garden scene frames a romantic comedy in which Cupid attempts to orchestrate love between elegantly dressed figures. Brinkley's fluid pen style and attention to decorative detail—the elaborate urns, drapery, and landscaping—typify the Sunday supplement's evolution toward illustrated storytelling. The strip's title and caption rely on viewer familiarity with classical mythology and wordplay. Brinkley, among the earliest women cartoonists in American newspapers, helped establish the visual grammar that would define comic strips and eventually the comic book form.