Little Orphan Annie

Harold Gray's *Little Orphan Annie* strip appears here in its early months, establishing visual conventions that would define newspaper comics for decades. The three-panel daily format uses speech balloons, expressive character poses, and sight gags—Annie reacting to Bunker Hill's noises, then a girl mentioning silver, followed by children abandoning their game at a whistle's sound. Gray's spare linework and focus on character reaction over elaborate backgrounds shaped how comic strips told stories in tight spaces. Published in the New York Daily News, the strip exemplifies how daily newspaper comics became the immediate predecessor to the comic book form, training millions of readers in sequential image literacy and establishing the orphan girl as a recurring protagonist who would anchor American popular culture.