The Top o' the Mornin'

W.D. Nesbit's *Top o' the Mornin'* exemplifies the Sunday newspaper comic page at its peak: a dense layout combining multiple self-contained gag strips with illustrated prose tales and poems. The page employs the visual vocabulary now standard in comics—sequential panels, speech balloons, and exaggerated expressions—to deliver humor ranging from domestic situations to animal fables. Each strip presents a complete joke or moral in six to eight panels, while recurring elements like the *Fable of the Authoritative Lion* anchor reader loyalty. The mix of illustrated humor and text reflects the Sunday supplement's dual purpose: entertainment for all ages and all reading levels. By 1905, such pages were the primary venue for comic narrative in America, predating the comic book format by decades.