Penny Ante — After the Gang Leaves

Jean Knott's *Penny Ante* strip depicts a domestic scene in which a father confronts his daughter about a gambling game gone wrong. The daughter admits losing fifty cents in penny ante, justifying the loss as cheap compared to a sealskin coat. The father's response—offering moral instruction about money management—drives the strip's gentle humor. Knott employs the formal vocabulary of early newspaper comics: rectangular panels, speech balloons, and character expressions that convey emotional beats. *Penny Ante* appeared in the Sunday funny pages, part of the syndicated strips that established comic narrative as a daily fixture in American households during the early twentieth century.