Bobby Make-Believe

In this Sunday strip, young Bobby pretends his pet tiger is a trained performer. The narrative unfolds across twelve panels, following Bobby's imagination as he stages increasingly elaborate scenarios—the tiger playing ball, napping, and finally performing tricks. The strip employs the visual conventions established by newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters, and slapstick humor. The artist uses cross-hatching and bold linework to render both the boy and his massive striped companion. Bobby Make-Believe exemplifies the child-protagonist format popular in early Sunday comics, where a single character's fantasies sustain the weekly narrative. These newspaper strips formed the immediate precursor to the comic book format.