The Darktown Fire Brigade: To the Rescue!

This Currier & Ives lithograph is part of the "Darktown Comics" series, which sold widely in 1880s America. The print depicts a chaotic firefighting scene with sequential action and comic exaggeration—figures tumbling and gesturing wildly—that establish visual gags later newspaper comics would refine through panels and dialogue balloons. Lithography enabled cheap, mass-produced graphics that prefigured comic strips.