Gabe

This Sunday strip by Frueh follows young Gabe and his friend Paul through a scheme to steal Aunt Sarah's pumpkin pie. The comic uses sequential panels with speech balloons to track the boys' plan—from initial plotting through kitchen theft to their eventual discovery. Frueh's clean line work and spot blacks typify early newspaper comics, which adopted the visual language of panel sequences and dialogue balloons from European sources. By 1911, newspaper strips were establishing the foundational grammar later adopted by comic books: recurring characters, sight gags tied to layout, and narrative pacing across discrete frames. The strip's humor relies on reader familiarity with domestic situations and child mischief, staples of Sunday funnies that built large family audiences.