The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead

This Sunday strip follows a young girl's mishaps with a fountain pen—borrowing her father's, accidentally using it instead of a dip pen, and creating chaos through rain-soaked accidents. The six-panel narrative uses sequential art conventions that became standard in newspaper comics: consistent character design, panel borders to mark time and action, and visual gags that unfold across the page. Recurring characters like Polly anchored newspaper strips in the early 1900s, drawing readers back daily or weekly. These strips, published alongside news and advertisements, established the visual vocabulary—speech balloons, expressive faces, sight gags—that would define the emerging comic book medium.