Stepbrothers by Gene Carr

Gene Carr's Stepbrothers appeared in the Sunday comic sections of major newspapers during the early 1910s. The strip follows a household of characters—a man in a top hat, his portly companion, and assorted family members—through domestic situations rendered in Carr's distinctive visual style. Panels flow left to right across the page, with speech balloons carrying dialogue and sight gags. The composition reflects the formal vocabulary established by newspaper comics in the preceding two decades: regular panel gridding, character consistency, and humor derived from physical comedy and verbal exchange. Sunday pages like this were the principal venue for color comics before the comic book format emerged in the 1930s.