Top O' the Mornin'

W. D. Nesbit's *Top O' the Mornin'* exemplifies the Sunday newspaper comic page at the turn of the twentieth century. The strip combines multiple short gags—"One Thing and Another," "His Curiosity," "Wicked Man," "Refined Rosina"—each with its own panel sequence and title, a format that maximized editorial space while entertaining diverse readers. Nesbit employs sequential panels with speech balloons and expressive line work to develop jokes and character moments. These Sunday pages, running alongside dailies in newspapers nationwide, established the visual vocabulary and narrative structures that would define comic books: recurring characters, sight gags relying on drawing style, and the rhythmic pacing of panel-to-panel storytelling. Such strips were the direct ancestors of the modern comic book form.