Top O' the Mornin'

W. D. Nesbit's *Top O' the Mornin'* demonstrates the Sunday supplement format at the turn of the century: multiple independent comic episodes sharing a single page, each with distinct visual gags and poetic or prose captions. The strip uses sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring character types—here a cast of urban comedians in various spring-themed scenarios. The layout combines illustrated narrative with typeset text, reflecting the hybrid nature of early newspaper comics that evolved from Victorian chromolithographic supplements. Such pages established foundational visual conventions: panel borders, word-balloon placement, and character continuity that would become essential grammar for the medium as it developed into the comic book format.