The 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. Multiple strips share the page—*A Fish Story*, *Papa Knew*, *In Study and Seclusion*, and others—each using sequential panels, speech balloons, and repeated character types to build narrative momentum. The central strip *Must Change* depicts a domestic scene in detailed pen-and-ink crosshatching. These Sunday pages, distributed nationally through syndication, reached millions of readers and established visual conventions—panel borders, word balloons positioned above characters, sight gags and dialogue driving plot—that would become the foundation of the comic book form emerging decades later.