right|thumb|550px|[[Billy DeBeck's Barney Google (October 7, 1934), a page featuring two toppers: Bunky and the single-panel Knee-Hi-Knoodles.]]

A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.

Toppers usually were drawn by the same artist as the larger strip. These strips usually were positioned at the top of the page (hence their name), but they sometimes ran beneath the main strip.

In 1904, Frederick Opper drew his And Her Name Was Maud, about the kicking mule Maud, into comic strips, books and animation, but on May 23, 1926, Opper positioned And Her Name Was Maud as the topper to his Happy Hooligan, and it ran along with Happy Hooligan until both strips came to a conclusion on October 14, 1932. On May 16, 1926, Harold Knerr began ', a topper to The Katzenjammer Kids, which ran until two years after his death. By 1936, to avoid any association with Hitler, the dog's name was changed from Adolph to Schnappsy (a.k.a. Schnapps).

Spinoffs

Characters in toppers sometimes turned up in the main strip, such as Herby appearing in Smitty, and Kitty Higgins joining the cast of Moon Mullins. In a few cases, the topper introduced characters later developed into a successful Sunday page, as happened when Krazy Kat became a spin-off from The Family Upstairs and Roy Crane's Wash Tubbs appeared over J. R. Williams' Out Our Way with the Willets Sunday strip. The Wash Tubbs Sunday strip ran in that format from 1927 until 1933, when Crane launched Captain Easy as a Sunday page (featuring Wash Tubbs as a secondary character).

Gene Ahern's topper The Squirrel Cage, which ran above his Room and Board, is notable because of the repetitive use of the nonsensical question, "Nov shmoz ka pop?", which was never translated yet became a national catchphrase. As a consequence, The Squirrel Cage is today better remembered than Room and Board, despite its 17-year run.

On at least one occasion, a character exited the topper and dropped down into the main strip. This happened on April 17, 1938, when an absent-minded character in the Rosie's Beau topper realized he was in the wrong place and climbed down into the first panel of Bringing Up Father, arriving in the living room of Maggie and Jiggs. During the 1940s, Snookums ran as the topper above Bringing Up Father. In the final episode of HBO's The Pacific (2010), Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) is seen reading Snookums.

During its long run, Pete the Tramp had several topper strips, as detailed by comic strip historian Allan Holtz:

Toppers bottom out

In half-page format comics, toppers at times appeared at the bottom; if removed, the remaining comic fit in a third page. Some toppers consisted of only a single panel, an example being those that accompanied Joe Palooka in the mid-1940s. Holtz notes:

Some strips continued to supply toppers into the 1960s, and in a few cases even the 1970s. Maw Green in Little Orphan Annie was the last Sunday strip topper, except for the brief use of the topper parodies Sawdust and The Invisible Tribe in Dick Tracy.

  • Barney Google'Bughouse Fables (1926), Bunky (originally Parlor Bedroom and Sink, 1926-1948), Knee-Hi-Knoodles (single panel, 1934-1935)
  • Connie'The Wet Blanket (1931-1936)
  • Sweeney & Son'Jinglet (1933-1960)