Top o' the Mornin'

W. D. Nesbit's *Top o' the Mornin'* appeared in the Sunday newspaper pages as a full-page layout combining sequential comic strips with prose stories and illustrated verse. The page demonstrates the emerging visual vocabulary of early comics: panel borders, speech balloons, and repeated characters navigating domestic and social situations. Multiple narrative strips—"In 1640," "Self-Defence," "Sympathy," and "A Threat and a Promise"—share space with traditional text, reflecting the hybrid format of Sunday supplements before the comic book's formalization. Nesbit's work exemplifies how newspaper comic strips, born from the Sunday pages' experimental layouts, established conventions that would define the medium for generations.