The Top o' the Mornin'

W. D. Nesbit's *The Top o' the Mornin'* exemplifies the Sunday newspaper page at the height of the comic strip's formal invention. The layout combines multiple comic narratives—*Enough*, *The Bare Knee Effect*, *A Nature Lesson*, *Her Order*, *Every Little Helps*, *His Failing*—with illustrated short stories, poetry, and an "Alphabet of Ambition" sequence. Speech balloons, sequential panels, and recurring character types structure the humor across tiers. The strip's visual language, built from decades of newspaper illustration and vaudeville timing, established the grammar that would define comic books: panel borders, expressive line work, and gag pacing driven by text and image together. Sunday pages like this were the laboratory where artists codified the medium's vocabulary.