Penny Ante by Jean Knott

A Sunday comic strip featuring a card game among well-dressed men and boys. The humor turns on 'Roodles'—a game one character refuses to call by that name, insisting on new rules that require showing one's full hand. Knott's panel layout uses speech balloons and sequential action to build the joke, with a cast of recurring characters defined by simple, expressive linework. The strip exemplifies how newspaper comics of this era developed visual storytelling conventions: distinct panels, dialogue integrated into images, and character-driven humor that played on social situations and male camaraderie. Such dailies and Sunday pages formed the foundation of American comic art, establishing narrative techniques that would define the medium.