The Newlyweds

George McManus's *The Newlyweds* depicts a young married couple navigating domestic life through visual gags and slapstick humor. The strip employs sequential panels with speech balloons to show the husband and wife in comic situations—hiding secrets, managing household matters, interacting with their child. McManus uses clear panel borders and expressive figure work to guide readers through cause-and-effect narratives. This strip exemplifies the Sunday newspaper comic page format that established the visual vocabulary of comics: discrete panels, word balloons anchoring character voice, and recurring characters whose relationships drive ongoing storylines. Published in newspapers nationwide, *The Newlyweds* reached millions of readers and helped cement comics as a distinct medium distinct from illustration, influencing the form that would evolve into the comic book industry.