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From the exhibition

Happy New Year with Mother Goose

· December 29, 1901

Happy New Year with Mother Goose
This Sunday page combines Mother Goose characters with contemporary comic figures in a sprawling composition centered on the nursery rhyme matriarch. Billy Bounce, the mischievous young protagonist, appears throughout—receiving New Year calls and participating in a cake walk with Miss Muffet. The strip demonstrates early sequential art conventions: multiple vignettes arranged around a central figure, speech balloons advancing gags, and recurring characters anchoring narrative continuity. Published during the formative years of the Sunday newspaper comics section, this page exemplifies how artists of the period adapted folklore and created hybrid worlds where traditional characters met modern urban settings and humor. The dense, playful composition reflects the visual density characteristic of turn-of-the-century comic supplements that captivated newspaper readers.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain