The Top O' the Mornin'

By Richard Henry Little, this Sunday newspaper page demonstrates the visual variety that defined early comic strips. Multiple narrative sequences—bedroom scenes, street encounters, comic confrontations—flow across the page in an irregular grid, with speech balloons anchoring dialogue and gags. The strip employs ink wash and crosshatching for tonal depth, characteristic of rotogravure reproduction. Recurring characters and situational humor sustained reader interest across installments. Sunday pages like this, appearing in metropolitan dailies nationwide, established the formal vocabulary—panel borders, word-image integration, sequential pacing—that would become foundational to the emerging medium of comics.