Etta Kett

*Etta Kett* by Paul Robinson followed a teenage girl's daily misadventures in a comic strip format distributed across newspapers. The four-panel sequence shown here depicts Etta and her father stranded on an island after a boating accident—she calls for help while he remarks on her swift swimming. The strip employs the visual conventions established by earlier newspaper comics: distinct panels arranged left to right, speech balloons containing dialogue, and expressive figure drawing. Robinson's work exemplifies the humor strips that dominated Sunday funny pages and dailies, where recurring characters and domestic or romantic comedies found audiences nationwide. These serialized strips in newspapers became the direct precursor to the comic book format that emerged in the 1930s.