Kitty Cobbe, "A Difficult Job"

A single-panel comic strip by James Montgomery Flagg depicting a woman in an office consulting with two men in business suits. The scene illustrates a narrative about Kitty, a stenographer who gains confidence through night study and seeks a new position at Sandford & Son. When her references are ignored, the firm hires her anyway—but soon regrets the decision as Kitty introduces chaos to their dictation protocols by transcribing their simultaneous instructions. Flagg employs cross-hatching and pen line-work characteristic of early newspaper illustration. The composition uses spatial depth and body language to convey social interaction, establishing visual conventions that would become fundamental to comic strip grammar: character placement, gestural communication, and narrative sequence compressed into a single frame.