Penny Ante

Jean Knott's *Penny Ante* strips followed a group of working-class men navigating small stakes gambling and modest social pleasures. Here, one character has won money and his friends eagerly volunteer schemes to spend it—a taxi ride, lunch, an evening out. The strip uses rapid-fire dialogue in speech balloons, multiple panels advancing the joke sequentially, and exaggerated facial expressions characteristic of early newspaper comics. Like most strips of the 1910s, *Penny Ante* appeared in daily and Sunday papers, establishing the visual language and recurring-character format that would define comic strips and eventually comic books. Knott's work exemplified the urban humor genre popular with newspaper readers of the era.