The Darktown Fire Brigade: All on Their Mettle

This Currier & Ives lithograph belongs to their "Darktown Comics" series, mass-produced color prints that sold widely in late-19th-century America. The print depicts a firefighting scene with crowded action and exaggerated physical types typical of popular humor of the era. Though printed decades before comics emerged as a distinct medium, such serial imagery—recurring characters, comic situations, visual comedy—prefigured the visual language newspapers would soon develop.