Smitty—Pro and Con

This strip follows Smitty, an office boy navigating workplace dynamics with his boss. The four-panel sequence demonstrates the visual economy of newspaper comics: speech balloons advance plot and character across discrete frames, while the artist's pen line renders posture and gesture to convey tone—from Smitty's earnest pitch to his boss's dismissive reaction. The recurring office setting and employer-employee tension drove the strip's appeal to daily readers. Smitty exemplifies how newspaper comics of this era built humor through character consistency and situational comedy, establishing narrative patterns that became foundational to comic book storytelling.