Winsor McCay's "A Pilgrim's Progress"

I believe there to be a flaw in the collections of Winsor McCay's early works.

The comic strip "A Pilgrim's Progress" oughta be in chronological order. (And by that, I mean the strips that the book is reprinting.)

The basic reason has to do with how one particular strip marks a startling change in the comic strip. It's where the protaganist is given an umbrella. At this point, the strip changes from being hopelessly bleak to just plain bleak... and I mean that quite literally.

The strip is about a man who carries around a valaise with the words "Dull Care", and his inability to get rid of the valaise. But the umbrella? Well... he's sitting there contemplating drinking a full bottle of rat poison... a delivery person gives him a prize, he opens it, it's an umbrella, he unfurls it, the umbrella says "HOPE", and he decides he wants to live.

Thus... he's shielded with "hope".

Actually, what I want to know is... where in the pages of the newspaper that published this did they publish it? The humour is... darker... darker... save, of course, for that slight glimpse of hope that umbrella gives him...