Like all American mass media of the last century, demographics and market forces provide the frame within which trends in comic strip content lived. Harry Haenigsen’s Penny launched in 1943 directly out of the intersection of two new social realities – gal power and the “invention of the teenager.” It is not surprising, then, that Haenigsen took an almost sociological approach to portraying two things he certainly was not – young nor a girl. Like any good cartoon anthropologist, he decided to go native. The Oct. 6 1946 Philadelphia Inquirer reports how the New Hope artist researched Penny by eavesdropping on soda shop conversations and even hosting cookouts for the local high schoolers.