Penny Ante: High Spading

Jean Knott's *Penny Ante* strip depicts a poker game interrupted by complaints about "high spading"—a rule violation that delays play. The cartoon uses the visual conventions that became standard in newspaper comics: numbered panels, speech balloons anchoring dialogue, exaggerated facial expressions, and recurring characters in domestic settings. The strip's humor derives from its specificity about card-game etiquette and the social friction it creates among players. Such humor strips populated Sunday and daily papers in the 1910s, establishing the episodic format and visual vocabulary that would define the medium as it evolved into the comic book.