Their Only Child (But Papa Won't Get a Raise)

This twelve-panel domestic comedy follows a young couple and their child through escalating demands for money and toys. The husband repeatedly refuses to request a raise from his boss, citing economic uncertainty, while the child's tantrums and the wife's persistence mount across the strip. The humor hinges on class anxiety and parental weakness—familiar themes in early newspaper comics. The strip exemplifies how Sunday comic sections became laboratories for visual storytelling. Sequential panels with speech balloons establish cause-and-effect narrative, recurring characters create reader investment, and economical drawing conveys personality and emotion. By 1913, such strips had become essential to newspaper circulation, establishing the formal and commercial foundations that would evolve into the comic book industry.