Polly Sleepyhead and the Great Earthquake at Sandy Beach

Drawn by Peter Newell, this Sunday strip follows a child character through eight panels of seaside mishap. Polly naps on the beach while her companions play; an earthquake jolts the sand, tossing her repeatedly as the ground shifts beneath her. Newell uses sequential panels with clear spatial progression to build comic timing—each frame escalates the physical comedy. The strip exemplifies early newspaper comics' reliance on visual gags and recurring child protagonists. Newell's clean linework and careful composition of each panel helped establish the visual vocabulary that transformed Sunday supplements into a distinct medium, bridging the gap between illustration and the sequential narrative art that would define comics.