Betty

By C. A. Voight, *Betty* exemplifies the Sunday newspaper comic strip at its formal peak. The strip employs a nine-panel grid with speech balloons and sequential action—visual conventions established by pioneers like Richard Outcault and Winsor McCay in the 1890s-1900s. Here, Betty and a male companion encounter an enormous sea creature, playing out the slapstick logic of early comics: problem, escalation, physical comedy, resolution. The ink brushwork and cross-hatching show newspaper reproduction constraints and aesthetic choices of the era. Such strips, syndicated across hundreds of papers, created the template for comic books: recurring characters, episodic gags, and panel-based narrative that would define the medium for decades.