Smitty — Cupid's Branch Office

This Sunday strip from *Smitty* showcases the visual conventions that shaped early comics: divided panels, speech balloons, and visual gags built on recurring characters and settings. The strip follows a boy and his dog encountering an old tree where lovers carve initials—a setup for humor across four panels. The artist uses pen-and-ink cross-hatching for depth and employs sequential narration to move the joke forward, techniques foundational to newspaper comic pages. *Smitty* exemplified the Sunday comics' role as laboratories for the visual language that would define the comic book medium, combining domestic humor with energetic line work and clear narrative progression.