From the exhibition
The Day of the Girl
· July 4, 1917

Nell Brinkley's *The Day of the Girl* exemplifies the Sunday comic supplement at its height. The strip features fashionable young women engaged in outdoor sports—polo, baseball, and athletic pursuits—rendered in Brinkley's signature ornate line style. Multiple panels show action sequences and character expressions with period-appropriate detail: uniforms, equipment, and facial features rendered through dense cross-hatching and decorative linework. The large portrait closeup demonstrates the artist's focus on physiognomy and glamour. Brinkley's work, which appeared regularly in major newspapers, helped establish visual conventions for character-driven humor strips: recurring protagonists, sequential action panels, and dialogue balloons integrated into composition. Her graphic approach—combining fashion illustration with comic narrative—influenced the aesthetic vocabulary of early twentieth-century American comics.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain