The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead

This Sunday strip follows Polly, a sleeping girl, and a mustachioed man with a tuba who attempts various schemes to wake her. The narrative unfolds across nine panels using the sequential visual grammar—distinct rectangular frames, speech balloons, and repeated characters—that newspaper comics pioneered. The gags escalate from gentle to absurd: the man plays his instrument loudly, inflates soap bubbles around her, and finally creates a lightning storm. The strip's humor relies on physical comedy and visual exaggeration rendered in pen and ink crosshatching. By 1906, such Sunday supplements had become a standard feature of American newspapers, establishing the panel-and-balloon format that would define comic art for decades to come.