Smitty: Office Comedy

This strip follows Smitty, a young office worker navigating workplace dynamics and petty office politics. In this sequence, Smitty's boss announces a new figure has arrived, sparking curiosity among the staff. The comic employs the visual vocabulary that defined newspaper strips: sequential panels with varied compositions, speech balloons advancing plot and gag, and recurring character types. Smitty's humor derives from the mundane friction of office life—gossip, hierarchy, and the everyman's struggle against bureaucracy. Newspaper comics like this one were foundational to the medium's visual grammar and audience expectations, establishing the daily and Sunday strip as laboratory for panel layout, timing, and character-driven comedy that would influence all subsequent comic art.