An Old Flame

Drawn by Nell Brinkley, "An Old Flame" appeared in newspapers during the golden age of the Sunday comic supplement. The strip features a young woman whose memory of a past romance kindles present feeling—a romantic comedy premise common to the era's strips. Brinkley's distinctive style combines detailed figure drawing with dynamic radiating lines that suggest emotion and movement. The composition integrates text and image across the full page, demonstrating how newspaper comics evolved as a hybrid medium. By the 1920s, the Sunday funnies had become essential reading, establishing visual conventions—speech balloons, sequential panels, recurring characters—that would shape comic books and graphic storytelling for decades.