Billy Possum: His Life and Adventures

Paul West's *Billy Possum* ran as a Sunday newspaper comic strip, following the adventures of an anthropomorphic opossum protagonist through urban and rural escapades. The strip employs the visual conventions that defined early newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, expressive line work, and recurring character interactions that reward regular readers. By the early 1900s, the Sunday comic pages had become a major draw for newspapers, establishing the visual language—panel borders, word balloons, action lines—that would become foundational to the comic book medium. Artists like West demonstrated how character-driven humor and narrative serialization could sustain reader interest across weeks and months of publication.