Out Our Way

A Sunday strip depicting a grandfather absorbed in his new radio set while a cat yowls in the background. The old man marvels at the orchestra music emanating from the device, unaware the radio isn't plugged in. The strip demonstrates the newspaper comic's mastery of sight gags and sequential narrative—multiple panels showing action and reaction, speech balloons carrying dialogue and thought, and a punchline that rewards close reading. By the 1920s, comic strips had become the dominant visual narrative form in American newspapers, establishing visual conventions—panel borders, word balloons, recurring characters—that would shape comic books for decades.