Sunday Newspaper Comic Section

This Sunday newspaper page from 1902 represents the golden age of newspaper comics, when the Sunday sections were the primary vehicle for sequential art in America. The format—multiple strips arranged on a broadsheet page with varied sizes and layouts—became the template for early comic books. Artists working in newspapers during this period established the visual language of comics: panel borders to sequence action, speech balloons for dialogue, and recurring characters that drew readers back week after week. The newspaper comic strip was the dominant mass medium for comics until the 1930s, when publishers began collecting these strips into bound volumes, creating the modern comic book format.