Etta Kett

Paul Robinson's *Etta Kett* follows a young flapper navigating school, social life, and romance. This strip exemplifies the daily newspaper comic form that emerged in the early twentieth century—recurring characters, dialogue balloons, sequential panels, and visual gags compressed into tight rectangular grids. *Etta Kett* appeared in hundreds of papers, establishing the visual and narrative conventions that newspaper comics would pass directly to the emerging comic book industry. The strip's humor derives from situation comedy and wordplay, with Etta's schemes and misadventures driving the action across panels. By the 1930s, such strips had become the primary training ground for the artists and writers who would shape comic books as a distinct medium.