Happy Hooligan — Omaha Daily Bee, June 28, 1914

Twelve numbered panels plus a banner tier track the misadventures of Happy Hooligan — the tin-can-hatted, good-natured tramp created by Frederick Burr Opper — as his dog Maximilian causes chaos among London royalty, sending a constable and guests tumbling down stairs before the whole party ends up hauled to police headquarters. Opper's loose, expressive line and densely worded speech balloons are characteristic of his long run in Hearst papers beginning 1900. Strips like this one were the direct formal ancestors of the comic book: the recurring cast, sequential panels, and integrated dialogue that Opper, Richard Outcault, and Rudolph Dirks standardized on Sunday pages between 1895 and 1915 established the visual grammar American comics still use.