Betty

C. A. Voight's *Betty* follows a young woman through a seaside misadventure involving an oversized bathing suit. The strip demonstrates the visual vocabulary emerging in early newspaper comics: sequential panels advancing narrative, speech balloons carrying dialogue, and recurring characters in domestic situations. The humor derives from physical comedy and social observation—Betty's embarrassment over modest swimwear and her parents' concern about propriety. By 1919, such strips populated Sunday pages nationwide, establishing the formal grammar that would define comic strips and, later, comic books. Artists working in this era pioneered the panel-based sequential art form that became central to twentieth-century visual storytelling.