Sunday Comic Section — St. Louis Republic

This Sunday newspaper page from 1903 demonstrates the early standardization of the comic strip format in American dailies and weeklies. Multiple sequential narratives occupy the page, employing panel divisions, speech balloons, and recurring characters—visual devices that would become the foundation of comic book layout. The dense typography and illustration reflect how newspapers serialized visual stories alongside written news, establishing both the technical grammar and commercial model that would define the medium for decades to come.