Stepbrothers—Major Stuff Doesn't Believe in Ghosts

This Sunday comic strip from the San Francisco Call follows the misadventures of the Stepbrothers as a ghost haunts their home, despite Major Stuff's skeptical refusal to acknowledge the supernatural visitor. The strip demonstrates the visual vocabulary of early newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters in domestic settings, and escalating physical comedy. The narrative unfolds across twelve panels in a grid format typical of Sunday funny pages. Originally appearing in newspapers as a serial narrative, strips like this one established the foundational grammar of panel progression and character development that would define comic books. Sunday comics were the popular entertainment medium of the early twentieth century, reaching millions of readers and training audiences in the visual language of sequential art.