The Newlyweds and Splinters

This Sunday newspaper section presents two comic strips exemplifying the visual conventions that shaped early American comics. The Newlyweds by McManus follows a domestic couple through repeated gags across eight panels with dialogue balloons and sequential action—the domestic comedy formula that dominated newspapers. Splinters by Steinigans experiments with more abstract composition, featuring a patterned character amid anarchic visual chaos and multiple small figures. Both strips employ exaggerated, grotesque figure drawing typical of the era. These Sunday pages, appearing in hundreds of newspapers simultaneously, established the panel structure, recurring characters, and speech balloon conventions that would become the foundation of comic books. The mass circulation and standardized format of newspaper comics created the economic model and visual grammar that the comic book industry would inherit.