Sunday Comic Section — St. Louis Republic

This newspaper Sunday page represents the earliest phase of sequential comic art in America, when comic strips shared space with news, advertisements, and features in the Sunday edition. The page demonstrates the emerging visual language of comics—panel borders, speech balloons, and character recurrence—developed by artists working directly for newspapers. By 1901, the Sunday comic section had become essential to circulation, with papers like the Republic competing fiercely to attract readers through comic content. These strips, printed in black and white (with occasional color in wealthier papers), reached millions and established conventions that would define the medium for decades.