ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Betty by C. A. Voight

· 1919

Betty by C. A. Voight
Betty follows a young woman navigating domestic and social situations through comic mishaps. Here, Betty's romantic troubles prompt the boys to form a "consolation club," leading to a series of escalating predicaments involving automobiles, finances, and general chaos. Voight uses the nine-panel grid standard to Sunday newspaper comics, employing speech balloons, sequential action, and recurring characters to build narrative momentum across the page. The strip exemplifies how newspaper comics of this era established visual conventions—panel borders, expressive line work, and word-image integration—that became foundational to the comic book medium that would emerge in the following decades.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain