Penny Ante—With the Fan On

Gene Knott's *Penny Ante* strip exemplifies the Sunday newspaper comic format that directly preceded the commercial comic book. The strip uses a single large panel divided by speech balloons to depict a card game disrupted by a electric fan scattering the cards. The visual comedy relies on exaggerated facial expressions and physical action—hallmarks of the newspaper strip tradition inherited from earlier cartoonists. Recurring characters in predicaments, sequential storytelling through dialogue, and the speech balloon itself as a narrative device were innovations of newspaper comics that became foundational to the visual language of comic books. Such Sunday pages were the primary venue for comics before the 1930s consolidation into bound pamphlets.