Smitty — North Woods à la Mode

This *Smitty* strip demonstrates the visual conventions that newspaper comics established as the foundation of comic books. Four panels advance a gag through sequential action: two characters discover a mechanical contraption atop a building, the first explains its function with detailed narration across two panels, and the final panel pays off the joke with a button-push and reaction. Artist Walter Berndt uses consistent character design, fence-line panel borders, and overlapping speech balloons—techniques that became standard vocabulary for the medium. The Sunday page format allowed for expanded storytelling space and elaborate backgrounds, making newspapers the primary laboratory where comic art evolved during the 1920s and 1930s.