Etta Kett

Paul Robinson's *Etta Kett* follows a young woman navigating social life, romance, and schemes with her circle of friends. This strip exemplifies the daily comic format that evolved directly into comic books: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters, and visual gags anchored in contemporary settings. The strip's rapid-fire dialogue and physical comedy rely on the visual grammar pioneered by newspaper cartoonists—panel-to-panel transitions that guide readers through time and space, expressions and gestures that convey personality instantly. *Etta Kett* appeared in newspapers nationwide, reaching millions of readers and establishing templates for character-driven comedy that would define the medium for decades.