Smitty—Beware of Imitations

This Sunday strip from *Smitty* demonstrates the visual conventions that newspapers established as the foundation of American comics. Four panels track a child's interaction with an adult, using speech balloons, sequential panel borders, and recurring character types—the mischievous kid and the exasperated elder—that became templates for decades of comic storytelling. The strip's humor turns on mimicry and social friction, expressed through simple line work and clear spatial composition. *Smitty* ran as both a daily and Sunday feature in the 1920s and 1930s, reaching millions of readers and helping codify the grammar of panels, captions, and dialogue that would migrate directly into the comic books emerging at decade's end.