Smitty — Gone Native

This strip follows the visual conventions that defined newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, recurring characters, and sight gags spanning a narrative arc. The strip depicts a family's return home, with exaggerated reactions and physical comedy typical of the era's dailies and Sunday pages. Newspaper comics like *Smitty* established the formal language later adopted by comic books—panel borders, word-image integration, and character consistency across installments. Artists working in strips developed the visual grammar that became foundational to the medium, moving beyond static illustration toward dynamic sequential storytelling that could sustain humor and plot across multiple frames.