Smitty — Bull's-Eye!

A four-panel gag strip following office boy Smitty and his schemes. Here, Smitty enlists a colleague to distract the boss while he raids the office lunch. The punchline arrives when soup spills, signaled by a filing drawer opening—a visual non sequitur typical of newspaper comic timing. The strip uses the panel structure and speech balloons pioneered in 1890s adventure comics, applied to slapstick office humor. *Smitty* ran as both a daily and Sunday feature, establishing recurring characters and situations that drove reader loyalty across the funny pages. The brisk linework and economical character design reflect the production demands of syndicated comics: quick to draw, instantly readable, built for repetition.