Penny Ante—Keeping 'Em Honest

Jean Knott's *Penny Ante* depicts a card game interrupted by domestic negotiation. The strip employs the visual conventions of early newspaper comics: sequential panels, speech balloons carrying dialogue and exposition, and recurring characters in a domestic setting. One player explains his habit of exaggerating poker losses to his wife; another warns against leaving rings on the table. The composition moves from close-up character interaction to a wider scene of four men at play. This strip exemplifies the Sunday page format that established comics as a mass medium—combining humor with recognizable social situations, relying on readers' familiarity with both the characters and the gag situations that could repeat and evolve across multiple installments.