Smitty — Dressed to Kill

This daily strip follows Smitty, a mischievous office boy whose schemes and misadventures drive the narrative across four panels. The sequence shows a knife attack, a cat's violent reaction, and escalating chaos that lands Smitty in trouble with his boss—a typical formula of slapstick consequence. The strip employs the visual vocabulary that became standard in newspaper comics: multiple panels advancing the story left to right, speech balloons for dialogue, and exaggerated character expressions. Smitty appeared in both Sunday and daily strips, reaching millions of readers through syndication. The series exemplified how newspaper comic strips functioned as serialized entertainment, building reader loyalty through recurring characters and predictable comedic rhythms that influenced the emerging comic book medium.