The Teasers—Bobby Convicts Himself

This strip follows Bobby through a domestic mishap: breaking a vase, then attempting to hide the damage from his mother. The six-panel sequence uses the grammar that defined early newspaper comics—recurring child protagonist, domestic humor, speech balloons advancing the narrative, and visual gags dependent on sequential arrangement. By 1904, such strips had become standard Sunday features in major papers, establishing the visual language that would structure comic books for decades to come. The progression from mischief to confession shows how panel arrangement could convey cause and consequence more efficiently than prose.