Bobby Make-Believe

In this Sunday strip, young Bobby imagines himself as a police officer, following his mother's morning departure for a church social. The narrative unfolds across twelve panels showing Bobby's fantasy: directing traffic, making arrests, managing a fruit stand, and finally apprehending a real burglar—only to discover the officer on the beat has arrived to take actual credit for the capture. The strip employs the visual conventions now standard to newspaper comics: sequential panels, speech balloons advancing plot and character voice, and a child protagonist whose active imagination drives the humor. Bobby Make-Believe exemplifies the domestic comedy strips that dominated Sunday pages during the 1910s, offering readers accessible humor through a child's perspective.