Penny Ante—Playing the "Consolations"

A comic strip by Jean Knott depicting five men at a poker table consoling themselves after losing money. The strip employs the visual conventions that defined early newspaper comics: distinct panels, speech balloons, and expressive caricature. The humor turns on wordplay—"consolations" (consoling remarks) versus the card game's consolation prize rounds—layered across sequential panels that advance a single joke. By 1916, such strips had become standard features of Sunday and daily newspapers, establishing the narrative and visual grammar that would define comic books: recurring characters, panel progression, and dialogue integrated with illustration to tell stories in minutes.