Smitty

A four-panel daily strip following the office misadventures of Smitty, a young office boy working under the imperious Mr. Bailey. Here, Smitty's boss discovers him neglecting work, leading to the boy's characteristic fast-talking deflection and a negotiation over salary. The strip employs the visual conventions that defined newspaper comics: sequential panels with speech balloons, dynamic body language, and tight facial expressions to convey personality. Smitty's rapid-fire dialogue and physical comedy drove the strip's appeal across hundreds of papers. Published from 1921 through the 1950s, *Smitty* exemplified the daily newspaper comic as mass entertainment, where recurring characters and office-based humor created a reliable rhythm for readers seeking a moment of levity.