From the exhibition
Sunday Comic Section
· March 30, 1902

This newspaper Sunday section demonstrates the visual foundations of American comics in their infancy. Multiple strips populate the page with sequential panels, speech balloons, and exaggerated character designs characteristic of early 1900s newspaper humor. The layout shows artists experimenting with panel arrangement and narrative flow—techniques that would become the visual grammar of modern comics. These Sunday sections, appearing in papers nationwide, created the mass audience and commercial infrastructure that made comic books possible decades later. The work reflects period conventions including ethnic caricature, common in newspaper humor of the era. These pages were the primary venue for sequential narrative art before the comic book industry emerged.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain