The Top O' the Mornin'

W. D. Nesbit's *Top O' the Mornin'* exemplifies the Sunday newspaper comic page at the turn of the century. The layout combines multiple independent gag strips—"An Alphabet of Jokes," "Her Meditations," "Little Henry's Slate," "Youthful Diplomacy"—with a larger narrative sequence in the center. The visual language employs sequential panels with speech balloons and expressive ink drawings to convey humor through both situation and character reaction. Recurring figures and domestic scenarios anchor reader engagement across installments. This format, standard in Sunday supplements of major papers, established the architectural grammar of comics: bordered panels, word-image integration, and serialized storytelling that would define the medium for decades.