Polly Sleepyhead: She Passes Through a Small Cyclone

Peter Newell's *Polly Sleepyhead* strip demonstrates the Sunday comic's visual storytelling through sequential panels and recurring characters. The narrative follows Polly through escalating domestic chaos as a cyclone strikes her home—a simple gag setup that unfolds across eight panels with increasing physical comedy. Newell employs the formal grid layout standard to newspaper comics of the era, using clear panel boundaries and expressive line work to convey motion and emotion. The strip exemplifies how early-twentieth-century newspaper comics developed the visual grammar that became foundational to the medium: panel progression, character consistency, and sight gags rendered through precise draftsmanship.