The comic strip is the most ambitious example of Easel capabilities, combining as it does framesets, balloon captions, fill-the-frame cropping and more. The steps to reproduce it are as follows:
Start a new composition by selecting File/New from the main menu, then use the printer and page setup window to pick the desired printer and set the page to 8 1/2"x 11", landscape orientation, 0.5" margins all around. Click OK.
Create a frameset: select Add/Add Frameset, set line thickness=1, # of lines=1, # of frames across=4, # of frames down=3, and spacing between frames=4. Select a frame color other than black if you want, then click OK.
Add Images: Select Add/Add Images and select the ones you want. Before adding images, however, you need to decide how you want them fitted to the frames: cropped or uncropped, and with or without any whitespace.
If you select a single empty frame and then add a single image, Easel will ask if you want the image "fit to the frame." If you answer Yes, Easel fits it uncropped as best it can, meaning there will be white space along one edge (except in the rare case where image and frame have the same aspect ratio).
The alternative is to use fill-the-frame cropping, which yields cropped and resized images that exactly fill each frame. To do so, select Tools/Fill-the-Frame Cropping Mode; then drag each image so that the upper left corner is inside the frame, right click it, select Crop/Rectangle, and crop as desired.
In the example, I used the fit-to-the-frame choice, but that's because at the time, I hadn't yet invented fill-the-frame cropping. It's your call. Oh, and in the last frame, I used elliptical cropping instead of rectangular.
Add the captions, one at a time: for each caption, select Add/Add Caption and drag a rectangle in the approximate location. When you release the mouse button, use the caption editor to enter the text, check Allow Multiple Lines and Transparent Background, set alignment to Centered, set the font properties as desired, and set the border to Balloon/Speaking or Balloon/Thinking, as appropriate. Then click OK and use the mouse to adjust caption size and position as necessary. Finally, right click the caption, select Attach Balloon, and left click on the image at the point where you want it attached. If it's not quite right, right click again, select Unattach Balloon, and try again.
Caption Tip: Remember that you can change the properties for all or a selected group of captions at once. If, for example, you wanted to change the font after creating all of the captions, you could right click any caption, select Edit All Captions, and do so.
Add the Title: This is actually just another caption, so select Add/Add Caption again and drag the rectangle. This time pick a larger font, uncheck Transparent Background, set the background color as desired, and set the border to Balloon - Exploding. After clicking OK, adjust the size of the caption rectangle to get the balloon centered around it, and you're done!