Mamma's Angel Child Teaches Polly How to Talk

This Sunday strip from the Chicago Tribune follows a young girl and her talking parrot, Polly, across six sequential panels. The narrative progresses from the parrot's initial squawks to the child's instruction in speech, culminating in chaos as the trained bird repeats her lessons—including slang the mother disapproves of. The artist employs speech balloons, expressive line work, and panel-to-panel action typical of early newspaper comics. By 1908, the Sunday funny pages had become a dominant popular medium, showcasing recurring characters and sight gags that drove newspaper circulation. This strip exemplifies how cartoonists developed visual storytelling conventions—sequential panels, dialogue integration, and situational humor—that would form the foundation of the modern comic book.