Chanticleer

C.L. Sherman's *Chanticleer* strips the Sunday funnies down to pure visual comedy. A rooster pursues a hen through six panels of escalating mishap: an umbrella becomes a rendezvous point, a string triggers an eclipse, and a carefully laid plan collapses into slapstick chaos. Sherman employs the formal grammar of newspaper comics—sequential panels, speech balloons, recurring animal characters—to build momentum toward a physical punchline. The rooster's expressions shift from scheming confidence to bewildered defeat, all rendered in bold ink lines and crosshatching. Published in the era when comic strips were still developing their narrative logic, *Chanticleer* demonstrates how repetition, transformation of ordinary objects, and sight gags could sustain reader interest across a full page.