Nobody by Meek

This two-panel strip demonstrates the visual conventions that newspaper comics inherited from 19th-century illustration and developed into the language of modern sequential art. A tall, thin figure in a top hat visits a newspaper editor to complain about repeated publicity, only to reveal—in the punchline—that he is literally Nobody. Meek's use of speech balloons, panel divisions, and recurring character types reflects the daily comic strip format that flourished in American newspapers during the 1910s. The strip's economy of line and reliance on verbal wit show how comics merged cartooning traditions with the joke structures of vaudeville and popular humor.