Top O' the Mornin'

Richard Henry Little's *Top O' the Mornin'* exemplifies the Sunday newspaper comic format at its inception. The page combines multiple independent gags and illustrated stories—puzzle pictures, short comic narratives, and advice columns—alongside serialized panels. Character-driven humor, visual sight gags, and handwritten dialogue balloons anchor the sequential art. By 1904, American newspapers had established the Sunday supplement as a showcase for illustrated humor, creating the visual and narrative structures that would define comic strips: recurring characters, panel progression, and speech balloons as vehicles for comedy and plot. These pages were the direct precursor to the comic book, demonstrating how artists and writers merged sequential imagery with witty text to sustain reader interest across multiple installments.