Old Doc Yak

Sidney Smith's *Old Doc Yak* follows a goat and his human companion through automotive mishaps and slapstick predicaments. The Sunday page unfolds across eight panels, each advancing a single comedic scenario: a jalopy journey that ends in collision and chaos. Smith employs the visual vocabulary established by earlier newspaper strips—sequential panels, speech balloons, motion lines, and recurring characters—to build momentum toward a punchline. The drawings are spare and kinetic, prioritizing action over detail. *Old Doc Yak* ran from 1910 to 1919 and exemplified how the newspaper Sunday comics operated as an essential proving ground for the visual grammar that would define comic books: panel layout, pacing, character persistence, and the integration of image and text as a unified narrative form.