Ophelia by Dwiggins

Dwiggins's *Ophelia* exemplifies the Sunday comic strip format that emerged in early twentieth-century newspapers. The page combines a large central illustration—a chaotic scene of mishaps and mayhem—with surrounding features: *Quiz Questions*, *Prize Funny Stories*, and advertisements. Speech balloons and sequential panels established the visual grammar newspapers would perfect. The strip's humor relies on slapstick and domestic comedy, while recurring characters and gags built reader loyalty. Such Sunday pages were laboratories where artists developed techniques—panel borders, visual pacing, character consistency—that became foundational to the emerging comic book medium. These newspaper strips, distributed to millions, created the artistic language and audience that comics would inherit.