Penny Ante—Paying Off

Jean Knott's *Penny Ante* strips followed the schemes and squabbles of working-class characters managing small debts and favors. Here, a man attempts to settle accounts with multiple creditors in a chaotic scene—each party demanding payment while confusion spreads about who owes whom. Knott's strip exemplifies the newspaper comic strip's gift for physical comedy and rapid-fire dialogue. The panel layout, speech balloons, and recurring cast of types became foundational to visual storytelling in early comics. By the 1910s, daily and Sunday strips were the primary laboratory for the visual grammar that would define the medium.