Bobby Make-Believe

This Sunday comic strip follows young Bobby through a series of imaginative daydreams, each panel depicting him as a different character in exotic locales—an aerial wanderer, a mountain climber, an Irish drinker, a Chinese visitor, and a Sahara explorer. The strip's visual structure relies on the established vocabulary of sequential comics: bordered panels, speech balloons, and a recurring child protagonist whose interior fantasies drive the narrative. By 1915, this format had become standard in American newspapers, building on decades of innovation by cartoonists who pioneered the panel-and-balloon language. The final panels return Bobby to his bedroom, grounding the fantasy within the domestic frame—a common plot device that emphasizes imagination as the engine of humor and adventure in early newspaper comics.