Nobody by Meek

This two-panel comic strip demonstrates the visual economy of early newspaper comics. An editor at his desk, addressed by a street character clutching poems, offers to buy everything the visitor has to sell. When asked his name, the character replies "Nobody"—the punchline delivered across the page break as the editor sits alone at his desk, deflated. Meek employs speech balloons and sequential panel progression to build comic timing, relying on reader comprehension of narrative flow. Strips like Nobody populated daily and Sunday newspapers in the 1910s, establishing conventions that would structure comic books: the contained panel, the word-image relationship, and character-driven humor recurring in serialized form.