Bobby Make-Believe and the Demon Alarm Clock

This Sunday newspaper strip follows Bobby through a dream sequence triggered by an alarm clock—a classic comic device of the era. The artist employs sequential panels with speech balloons to track Bobby's journey from bedroom to clouds to rooftop escape, establishing cause and effect across nine frames. The recurring child protagonist and domestic setting were standard fare in early newspaper comics, which trained readers in the visual grammar of panel progression, facial expression, and narrative flow. By 1917, Sunday comics like this had become the dominant form of sequential storytelling in America, directly preceding the comic books of the 1930s and beyond.