And They Get By With It (The Life Guard)

A Sunday newspaper comic strip by E.C. Segar featuring a portly life guard and a woman on a beach. The guard recounts his bravery through an improbable series of claims: an enlarged mental gland grants inspiration, he once saved a drowning sultan, and he possesses an octopus ear that catches sound waves. Each exaggeration provokes the woman's skepticism, escalating to her cries for help while he remains unmoved—the final panel ironically subverting his heroic pretensions. The strip exemplifies early comic narrative technique: sequential panels advancing a joke, speech balloons for character voice, and recurring physical types. Segar's approach—anchoring humor in character interaction and escalating absurdity—became foundational to newspaper comics and the visual language inherited by comic books.