Smitty — Where There's Smoke, There's Eats

A four-panel daily strip featuring Smitty, an office boy character, and his boss George. The narrative unfolds through sequential panels with speech balloons: George notices Smitty absent from his desk, learns he's signaling from the north woods via smoke, and recognizes the boyish prank—a coded fire signal meaning food is ready. The strip demonstrates the visual vocabulary established by newspaper comics: distinct panel borders, thought and speech balloons, and recurring character relationships that drive episodic humor. Newspaper strips of this era served as the direct precursor to comic books, establishing the panel-based sequential art form and character-driven narratives that would define the medium.