Smitty

This strip follows Smitty, an office boy navigating workplace schemes and small-time schemes in an urban business setting. The Sunday page demonstrates the visual conventions that became standard in American comics: sequential panels arranged left-to-right, speech balloons anchored to speakers, and recurring characters in episodic narratives. The strip's humor relies on physical comedy and dialogue—here, Smitty's boss rewards him with a trust fund paying $25 weekly, prompting Smitty's delayed reaction to the news. Newspaper strips like *Smitty* provided the template for comic book storytelling: they established how to pace action across panels, develop character through repeated appearances, and balance text with image. The artwork shows bold black lines and selective detail typical of dailies and Sunday pages that reached millions of readers and directly influenced the visual language of the comic books that followed.