Rupert Bear

Are the Rupert Bear Annuals comic strips? They are a unique format that tells the story four times. On each page, there are:

a heading
four drawn panels
a rhyme under each panel
a longer prose narrative -

- but no captions or speech balloons.

Rupert Bear is referenced in:

Neil Gaiman's The Books Of Magic;
Bryan Talbot's Grandville;
Alan Moore's The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen;
Moore's Jerusalem.

Thus, this post has referred to:

the unique Rupert format;
three comic strips;
one prose novel -

- and we frequently discuss TV and films. It is impossible to stay just with comics.

In Jerusalem, Alma must be an alternative Alan: a female artist instead of a male writer? Alma and her brother Mick (and maybe Alan and his brother Mike?) knew a (human) Bill Badger and pretended that he was the Rupert character with body shaved to appear human. I had already envisaged an Alan Moore treatment of Rupert: the Bear grows up, leaves home and gets an office job in London where there are race riots between Rabbits and Elephants...