Old Doc Yak Gives His Car the Once Over

Sidney Smith's *Old Doc Yak* strip depicts a goat mechanic tackling a grimy automobile repair job on Wilson Avenue. The narrative unfolds across twelve panels in a grid layout typical of Sunday newspaper comics, following the protagonist's discovery of accumulated grease and mysterious broken parts. Smith employs speech balloons and sequential panel arrangement—visual conventions that newspapers had standardized by the 1910s—to move the joke forward through dialogue and action. *Old Doc Yak* exemplified the character-driven humor strips that filled Sunday comics sections, establishing recurring casts and domestic scenarios as the foundation of what would become the comic book form.