Top o' the Mornin'

W. D. Nesbit's *Top o' the Mornin'* exemplifies the Sunday newspaper comic page at its height. The strip uses sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring characters—visual conventions that emerged from the daily comic strips of the 1890s. Here, multiple gags unfold across the page: physical comedy involving a man and woman, domestic situations, and dialogue-driven humor. The layout mixes large illustrated panels with dense text blocks, reflecting the era when comics occupied space alongside articles. By 1904, the Sunday pages had become a major draw for newspaper circulation, establishing the visual grammar that would define comic books: panel borders, narrative sequencing, and the integration of image and word that shaped an entire medium.