Penny Ante

Gene Knott's *Penny Ante* follows a cast of working-class men scheming and exchanging wisecracks. Here, one character tries to extract information from a reluctant friend, using cajoling and humor to break his silence. The strip employs the visual conventions that defined early newspaper comics: multiple panels advancing the gag, expressive character work, and overlapping dialogue balloons capturing rapid-fire banter. Published in Sunday papers during comics' foundational era, *Penny Ante* exemplifies how the medium's visual grammar—sequential panels, lettered speech, recurring characters—became the standard language that would evolve into the modern comic book form.