Spareribs and Gravy, Royal Tax Collectors

George McManus's Sunday strip demonstrates the visual vocabulary that emerged from newspaper comics' first decade: eight panels arranged in a structured grid, dialogue balloons advancing the narrative, and recurring characters in escalating comic situations. Here, tax collectors pursuing payment trigger a chain of slapstick consequences—overturned containers, flying objects, and characters tumbling through space. McManus uses contrasting blacks and whites, dynamic figure placement, and sequential action to guide readers through the gag. Sunday comic sections like this were essential laboratories where artists refined panel composition, timing, and the grammar of visual storytelling that would become foundational to the emerging comic book medium.