Herr Von Flinck Studies English

Six panels, one face, and a small catastrophe of pronunciation. Herr Von Flinck, introduced in the first caption as an earnest young German bent on mastering English, sets out to produce the sound "th." Frost tracks the attempt across the row: the jaw sets, the lips purse, the eyes bulge, the whole head knots with effort until something between a growl and a sneeze arrives. Frost had trained as an illustrator and knew anatomy well enough to deform it convincingly. He was among the first American artists to build a joke purely from a run of drawings, letting the change from panel to panel carry the timing the way a comic strip soon would. The captions only referee. The face does the work.