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From the exhibition

Cynthianna Blythe

· September 26, 1909

Cynthianna Blythe
A Sunday newspaper strip by Wallace Morgan (drawings) and Harry Grant Dart (verse), *Cynthianna Blythe* follows a young woman through a golf tournament. Eight panels arranged in a grid present sequential action: Papa Blythe's fishing mishap, tournament play, Cynthianna's composed responses to pressure, and her ultimate victory. Morgan's ink drawings employ heavy blacks and gestural linework to distinguish figures and establish depth across crowded fairways and clubhouse scenes. Dart's rhymed couplets anchor each panel, narrating character motivation and advancing plot through text-image cooperation. The strip exemplifies the Sunday comics format emerging in early-1900s newspapers: serialized character narratives, modular panel structure, and the integration of verbal and visual storytelling that defined the medium's vocabulary before the comic book.

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