Betty

C. A. Voight's *Betty* follows a young woman navigating domestic life and romantic entanglements across nine panels. The strip employs the visual conventions that define newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters, and sight gags anchored in everyday situations. Betty's mother arrives unannounced; Betty scrambles to hide evidence of her boyfriend's visit. The humor builds through misunderstandings and physical comedy—a car chase, frantic explanations, a courtroom scene. By 1919, such strips had become central to Sunday pages and dailies nationwide, establishing the panel-based narrative form that would evolve into the comic book format. Artists like Voight developed the grammar of comics: panel borders to control time and space, balloons to convey voice, and character consistency across installments.