Bobby Make-Believe

This Sunday newspaper strip follows young Bobby and his father Spud through an elaborate fantasy: tasked with delivering a wartime message, Bobby imagines himself as a soldier dodging enemy fire across treacherous terrain. The strip employs multiple panels to track both the real-world setup (left) and Bobby's invented adventure, using speech balloons and sequential imagery to distinguish imagination from reality. The comic exploits the adventure-fantasy genre popular in early newspaper strips, where children's daydreams drive narrative action. Such Sunday features, published in newspapers nationwide, established the visual grammar—recurring characters, panel layouts, and thought sequences—that became foundational to American comic books.