226 - Smokey Stover
When you talk about screwball humor in American comics, the one strip that's bound to come up is Bill Holman's Smokey Stover. The Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News Syndicate started distributing it on March 10, 1935, and it continued unabated for decades after the heyday of screwball comedy. The Tru-Vue Company produced the 3D filmstrip in the 1930 and 1940s.
Smokey was a fireman. His boss was Chief Cash U. Nutt. His wife's name was Cookie and they had a son named Earl. Smokey drove around in a two-wheeled firetruck known (to readers, at least) as The Foomobile. The word "foo" also turned up on signs, lists, menus, and the lips of various characters at random but frequent intervals. Holman claimed to have found it written on the bottom of a Chinese figurine.
"Foo", by the way, was picked up from this strip and used in sEvents - View-Masterral animated cartoons. It may have influenced the formation of the World War II slang expression "fubar" (a relative of "snafu"). The expression "foo fighter", a term used by UFO enthusiasts, is traced to Smokey Stover, who often called himself a foo fighter when anyone else would have said "firefighter". Computer hackers also use "foo" as an all-purpose noun — also, probably from having seen it in this strip.
The fact that it was the product of a unique mind is also why the strip ended in 1973 — that's when Bill Holman retired.
A word about "bubbled or glue blistered " reels...and violet areas on images: