Alphonse and Gaston

This Sunday page features the French characters Alphonse and Gaston with their friend Leon, caught in a typical comic predicament across six sequential panels. The strip employs the visual conventions that defined early newspaper comics: multiple tiers of action, speech balloons advancing narrative, and exaggerated physical comedy. Characters appear in different positions and situations panel to panel, creating continuity and pacing that guide readers through the gag. The style reflects the pen-and-ink aesthetic of turn-of-the-century newspaper illustration. Created during the formative period when Sunday comics pages became mass-market entertainment, these strips established recurring characters and situations that newspapers serialized for years, establishing patterns later adopted by the comic book format itself.