Alice Calls the Fire Department

This Sunday comic strip follows a child character through a domestic fire emergency, told across four sequential panels that advance the narrative from alarm to resolution. The artist employs speech balloons, varied panel compositions, and expressive figure work to convey action and dialogue. The strip demonstrates early newspaper comic conventions: recurring characters, slapstick humor, and visual gags that unfold across the page. By the early 1900s, such strips had become standard features in Sunday editions, establishing the formal grammar—panel borders, word balloons, sequential staging—that would define comic art. These newspaper strips, published weekly and daily, formed the direct precursor to later comic books and trained readers in the visual literacy required to follow illustrated narratives.