From the exhibition
The Newlyweds by McManus
· July 9, 1911
McManus's *The Newlyweds* appeared in Sunday newspaper comic sections across America in the early 1900s, featuring a young married couple navigating domestic mishaps. The strip exemplifies the visual vocabulary emerging in newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters, and sight gags that drive narrative. This page presents two storylines—the main strip about the couple and their baby carriage, and secondary strips *Dad in Kidland* and *That Kid*—a common Sunday format that maximized ad revenue and reader engagement. The hand-drawn style, panel borders, and gesture-based humor represent the foundational grammar that would define comic art for generations.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
