The Top O' the Mornin'

By W. D. Nesbit, this Sunday newspaper strip exemplifies the early visual vocabulary of sequential comics. Multiple narrative vignettes occupy the page—each with distinct panel borders, speech balloons, and captioned gags—establishing the formal grammar that would define the medium. Characters repeat across scenes; domestic situations and wordplay dominate. The dense layout, mixing illustration with prose exposition, reflects the transition from pure illustration toward the structured panel-based storytelling that newspapers pioneered and that became foundational to comic book composition and pacing.