Petting Patty

A daily strip following the romantic misadventures of its title character. Here, Patty juggles multiple suitors through a series of rapid-fire telephone conversations and encounters, each panel advancing the gag through overlapping dialogue and escalating complications. The strip employs the visual conventions now standard to newspaper comics: rectangular panels arranged left-to-right, speech balloons anchored to speakers, and a recurring cast navigating domestic and romantic scenarios. Such strips formed the foundation of comic narrative, establishing the sequential art language that would define the medium through the twentieth century.