Terry and Tacks

Joe Farren's *Terry and Tacks* follows a small boy attempting to play a phonograph record using a sewing needle instead of the proper stylus. The Sunday strip demonstrates the sequential storytelling conventions that newspaper comics had established by the 1910s: multiple panels arranged left-to-right, dialogue balloons advancing the narrative, and a child protagonist in domestic situations. The gag unfolds through physical comedy—the needle's failure, the boy's persistence, and the inevitable mishap—rendered in Farren's clean linework. By this period, Sunday newspaper comics had become a major form of popular entertainment, establishing visual grammar and recurring characters that would directly influence the emerging comic book medium.