Nobody by Meek

This comic strip demonstrates the visual vocabulary that newspaper cartoonists developed in the early twentieth century: sequential panels, speech balloons, and a recurring character type—here, a shabby vagabond named Nobody. The two-tier layout guides readers through a brief comic exchange: a bald man regrets not marrying when he had the chance; a ragged figure offers to sew on his buttons; the man asks who his benefactor is; the reply comes: "NOBODY!!" The punchline hinges on the character's name and the double meaning of the word itself. Meek's economical line work and expressive caricature exemplify the drawing style that populated Sunday newspaper pages and dailies, making comics a mass medium and establishing the formal grammar that comic books would inherit.