Early newspaper cartoonists had a fixation on fixations. From the relentless politeness of Alphonse and Gaston to the ravenous Hungry Henrietta to Mr. Jack’s apparent sex addiction, the comedy of dysfunction was central to the first decade of the medium. Rooted in caricature, and visual shorthand, cartooning has always been dominated by social typing of one kind or another. Racial stereotyping was rife, of course, in the first decade of strips especially. But they joined prankish kids, hapless husbands, befuddled cops, prissy socialites, country hayseeds, and wacky inventors in a kind of repertory cast of the comics pages in these years. But sometime after 1900, many cartoonists zoomed into specific characteristics, obsessions, and idiosyncratic tics to define a strip.