Sunday Comic Section — St. Louis Republic

This Sunday newspaper page from the St. Louis Republic represents the comic supplement format that launched American cartooning into mass culture. By the early 1900s, color comics had become the dominant entertainment feature of metropolitan newspapers, driving Sunday circulation wars between competing dailies. The page displays multiple strips and illustrated stories arranged across columns, each using sequential panels with dialogue balloons to advance narrative. This layout became the template for comic books: publishers would reprint newspaper strips, establishing the medium's visual grammar of panel progression, speech balloons, and recurring characters. The Sunday supplements trained millions of readers in how to read sequential art, making comics a fundamental part of American popular culture.