Naughty Pete, 1913

Naughty Pete was a comic by Charles Forbell that ran in the New York Herald; this strip is from 1913. A lot of the conventions of the comic strip from this time period are evident here: the tall, narrow format (this would have likely taken up an entire page), numbered panels, and flat, two-dimensional staging (before the influence of film began to produce more dramatic angles) all set this squarely in its time. However, Forbell makes some interesting choices here with color and composition. Most of the strips of this time were lavishly handcolored (Winsor McCay's Little Nemo being a famous example) and I find it interesting that for whatever reason, Forbell chose to limit his palette to this cream-of-spinach green and red, leaving only the statue and the child white. The writing and story in this strip is pretty thin (and there are a lot of bizarre moments: for example, the father seems to be carrying the statue in like it weighed as much as a coatrack, and once it's unveiled as the Venus the Milo, he decides the best place for it is on the bannister?). But Forbell's composition is here is really cool. It was rare for cartoonists of this time to experiment with slanted panels, and he carefully lays out the page so that Pete's narrative proceeds up a metaphorical and visual staircase of escalating tension, until at its climax the single long panel perfectly conveys the length and speed of his descent. As a single image, the comic actually works better than a lot of McCay's compositions- the color and the big diagonal lend it a unity of form. Hell yeah comics.