Notes concerning spectatorship and framing:

• The curtain forms a sharp boundary between audience and performance, and its square frame prefigures the frame of the sequential panel.

Notes concerning the culture of the marketplace:

• As the humorous ads in Hogan's Alley invade even the Kid's nightshirt, it becomes harder to tell whether the Kid is aligned with the "bottom line" concealed by the illusions of advertising, or with the illusions themselves.
• The curtain and the fantasy performance it makes possible distance the Kid from the world of the ghetto.

Notes concerning the business of the strips:

• The ad is for an associated feature in the comic supplement--a "newspaper" written by the bespectacled child with the "patented" head. Connections such as this one lend the comic supplement the depth and complexity of an alternate universe.

Detail from George Luks, "A Ghost Seance in Hogan's Alley," World 7 Mar. 1897. Reproduced from microfilm.