Comics from 1900 - 1938 were fucking amazing. I guess because fewer people could read back then, they needed gags in strips to really only exist on a visual level. I’m sure people read gags out then showed the picture to a group of workers or travelers.
Here’s a sheet of one-panel from 1910. I think these were by Rube Goldberg, before he did his machine illustrations.
The US adult literacy rate was 91% in the year 1910.
Ah, well, then I stand corrected. I was just looking for an excuse to drop an old timey comic anywho.
That seems high, because I think the literacy rate today is lower. I guess it depends on how you define literacy, though.
Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1)
These days comics were pretty intelligent
The best comedy echoes for ages. 😂
