Smitty—The Fox and the Hounds

A newspaper comic strip panel sequence depicting stockholders in urgent discussion. The strip follows a classic layout: dialogue-driven exposition across four frames, with character positions shifting to signal narrative movement. The gag turns on mistaken identity and bureaucratic confusion—Mr. Bailey is away, shares change hands, and the search for one Augustus Smith becomes a comedy of errors. Ink line work and cross-hatching create volume and shadow. Such strips, appearing daily and Sunday in papers nationwide, established the visual vocabulary of sequential narrative: panel borders, speech balloons, recurring characters, and timing through composition. These newspaper pages directly preceded the comic book format that emerged in the 1930s.