Spareribs and Gravy Bid Woof-Nuff a Fond Farewell

George McManus's comic strip from the San Francisco Call Sunday edition depicts a seaside farewell sequence featuring anthropomorphic characters and a dog. The eight-panel layout showcases the visual conventions that defined early newspaper comics: speech balloons advance narrative, panel transitions control pacing, and sight gags dominate the humor. McManus employs bold inking and dynamic figure work against sketchy backgrounds. This page exemplifies the Sunday funnies format—multi-panel narratives that entertained mass audiences and established the visual grammar later adopted by comic books. Newspaper strips like this were the direct precursor to the medium, developing recurring characters, serialized storytelling, and the panel-based sequential art that became foundational to comics.