Spareribs and Gravy's New Stunt Is a Bear

George McManus's Sunday strip follows two characters—Spareribs and Gravy—through a misadventure involving an escaped bear. The narrative unfolds across eight panels arranged in a grid, demonstrating the visual conventions that emerged in early newspaper comics: sequential panels, speech balloons advancing plot, and recurring characters in escalating situations. McManus uses the rectangular panel format to control pacing and reaction shots, while the strip's humor derives from physical comedy and miscalculation. Drawn for the San Francisco Call, this page exemplifies the Sunday comics section—a staple of American newspapers by 1912—that established the template for modern sequential storytelling and launched the visual language adopted by the comic book format that would follow.