Superstitious Sam Wena Skating

This six-panel strip follows Sam, a rotund character in a checked coat, as he attempts ice skating despite warnings from a tall companion in a suit and bowler hat. The humor derives from Sam's catastrophic tumbles—each panel escalates his mishaps across the frozen surface, ending with him knocked senseless in a chair, declaring the venture a success. The strip employs sequential narrative panels with speech balloons to convey both dialogue and physical comedy. Recurring character comedy and slapstick action were hallmarks of early newspaper comics, which established the visual language—panel borders, word balloons, and expressive character design—that became the foundation of modern comic books.