Polly Sleepyhead

This Sunday comic strip follows a child character through six sequential panels, tracking a narrative arc from encounter to mishap. A woman and boy meet two children by a tree; the woman enlists them in play; physical comedy ensues as the children swing from a rope. The final panel delivers a punchline payoff—slapstick consequences from the preceding action. Published in the newspaper comics pages that became the proving ground for sequential art, *Polly Sleepyhead* demonstrates the visual conventions emerging in early 1900s comics: panel borders delineating time and space, speech balloons carrying dialogue, and a recurring cast in episodic stories. The strip exemplifies how newspaper comics developed the grammar of panels and narrative pacing that would define the medium for decades to come.