The Duchess Has a Merry, Merry Christmas

This Sunday comic strip from the Chicago Sunday Tribune adapts Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, translating the Duchess character into a visual narrative across six panels. The artist uses speech balloons, sequential panel composition, and sight gags—a Christmas tree decorated with toys and oddities, gifts scattered about, children interacting with the grotesque figure—to carry the story. By 1902, newspapers had established the Sunday supplement as a vehicle for comic storytelling, developing visual conventions: consistent character design, panel-to-panel continuity, and the integration of text and image. This strip exemplifies how newspaper comics inherited and refined techniques from earlier illustrated serials and newspaper cartoons, creating a hybrid form that would directly influence the emergence of the comic book.