Smitty — The Double Cross

This *Smitty* strip demonstrates the visual conventions that defined newspaper comics: sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring characters in domestic or workplace settings. The gag unfolds across four frames—a wife presents a diet book to her husband, who reacts with skepticism, leading to a visual punchline in the final panel. The strip's economy of line and reliance on character expression and spatial composition were hallmarks of the Sunday funnies, which served as the primary laboratory for comic art before the emergence of the comic book industry. Recurring characters like Smitty, familiar to millions of daily and Sunday readers, created loyal audiences and demonstrated the commercial viability of serialized humor.