Smitty — Pulling a Boner

A daily newspaper strip following Smitty, a mischievous boy character navigating domestic life and punishment. This panel sequence shows the classic structure of 1910s comic strips: a setup involving a broken rope, escalating dialogue through speech balloons, and a slapstick resolution. The strip employs the visual grammar now standard to comics—sequential panels advancing narrative, expressive character poses, and hand-lettered dialogue integrated into the frame. Smitty strips appeared in daily papers nationwide, part of the medium's foundational era when newspaper comics established the visual language—panel borders, word balloons, and character continuity—that would define the emerging comic book industry.