From the exhibition
Sunday Comic Section
· July 27, 1902

This newspaper Sunday section exemplifies the commercial and artistic explosion of comics in the early 1900s. The page combines serialized narrative strips with single-panel gags, advertisements, and illustrated articles—a format that dominated the Sunday papers and directly preceded the comic book. Artists working in newspapers established the visual vocabulary still in use: sequential panels, speech balloons, recurring characters, and varied pacing. The integration of comics with department store ads and editorial content shows how newspaper comics drove both circulation and consumer culture. By 1902, the Sunday comic section had become essential to urban newspapers, establishing the medium's commercial viability and visual language.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain