Copyright Office Catalog, Second Quarter 1902

This page from the Library of Congress Copyright Office catalog documents registered works during the explosive growth of American popular entertainment. By 1902, the comic strip was emerging as a distinct medium in Sunday newspapers—*The Yellow Kid* had already pioneered sequential panels and speech balloons in the 1890s, while artists like Rudolph Dirks were developing visual conventions that would define comics for decades. These official registrations reveal what publishers deemed valuable enough to protect: early comic supplements, humor magazines, and illustrated serials that established the grammar of panel layout, character recurrence, and visual gags foundational to the modern comic book.