Gabe, By Frueh

This Sunday comic strip, drawn by Daniel Frueh for the San Francisco Call, depicts a Black character navigating domestic mishaps with his automobile. The strip employs the visual vocabulary established by earlier newspaper comics: a grid of equal panels, speech balloons advancing narrative, and exaggerated physical comedy. The automobile, a novel technology, provides the occasion for comedy. Newspaper Sunday comic sections like this served as the primary venue for sequential art before the comic book format emerged in the 1930s, making newspaper strips the true birthplace of American comics.