Alice Welcomes the Copper

This Sunday comic strip follows Alice through a domestic scene with multiple characters crowded into a kitchen. The four-panel sequence uses word balloons and sequential frames to build a simple narrative—a technique fundamental to early newspaper comics. The strip demonstrates the visual language emerging in the 1900s: distinct panel borders, overlapping figures to suggest depth and movement, and dialogue driving the gag. By this period, Sunday funnies in major newspapers had become laboratories for developing the graphic storytelling methods that would define the medium. Recurring characters and serialized humor kept readers returning daily, creating mass audiences for illustrated narratives before the comic book format itself existed.