Barney Google — The Washington Times, July 18, 1920

Twelve panels track Barney Google — round-eyed, top-hatted, barely five feet tall — as he hires out his horse Spark Plug as a riding-school mount, loses control of the animal, chases down the thief through pratfall and fisticuffs, then hitches the horse to a cart and delivers his customers anyway. Billy DeBeck's ink line is loose and kinetic: figures lean at impossible angles, speed-lines multiply, and exclamatory lettering does half the acting. The strip launched in 1919 and within three years spawned a hit song and national catchphrases. Sunday pages like this one — syndicated, full-page, sequentially paneled — were the direct formal ancestor of the comic book: same speech balloons, same recurring cast, same panel-to-panel grammar that later moved from newsprint to stapled pamphlet.