Spareribs and Gravy Are Up in the Air

George McManus's slapstick strip follows two characters—one drawn with exaggerated features characteristic of early-twentieth-century ethnic caricature—as they pursue a flying pig. Across nine panels, the narrative escalates through physical comedy: failed attempts to lasso the airborne animal, collisions, and tumbling falls. McManus employs the visual vocabulary that shaped American comics: sequential panels advancing action, speech balloons conveying dialogue and reaction, and dynamic postures conveying motion and emotion. This Sunday page exemplifies the newspaper comic section's role as the laboratory where artists invented comic grammar before the medium coalesced into the comic book format of the 1930s.