Penny Ante: The Pleasant Job of Banker

Gene Knott's *Penny Ante* strip exemplifies the humor comics that filled Sunday newspaper pages in the 1910s. Here, Eddie confronts a banker about credit, launching into a rapid-fire exchange of gags about stacked IOUs and dubious financial standing. The strip's panel layout and speech balloons—devices inherited from earlier newspaper cartoons and refined through the comics medium—drive the comedic timing. Recurring characters like Eddie anchored reader interest across installments, a structure that would later define comic books themselves. The exaggerated expressions and gestural drawing reflect the visual shorthand cartoonists developed to convey personality and emotion within confined spaces.