The Clown and the Elephant / The Lion Cubs Have Such a Sweet Papa

Two Sunday newspaper comic strips by Karl Pomeranz of Munich, drawn in the expressive German style popular in early 1900s papers. The top strip depicts a clown's slapstick encounter with an elephant across six panels, using dynamic poses and exaggerated anatomy typical of the era. Below, a six-panel sequence shows a man pulling a barrel-cart through African terrain, pursued by a hippopotamus and encountering lion cubs. Both strips employ recurring characters, sequential narrative panels, and visual gags—the foundational grammar of newspaper comics. Published in the Chicago Tribune, these strips exemplify how European and American artists developed the visual vocabulary of comic storytelling before the form crystallized into comic books.