Polly and Her Pals

Four panels track a vaudeville gag: Polly suspects Pa has quit smoking, and a clown-like figure is pressed to sing a "bird-like tenor" song as proof of his well-being. He gulps, then launches into a verse about dancing with a girl wearing a stocking with a hole in it — the punchline trails off mid-word, visual music notes floating away. Sterrett's linework is dense and rubbery, with exaggerated proportions and speech balloons that carry the full comedic rhythm. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched 1912 in the *New York Evening Journal*, is among the earliest strips to use a recurring domestic cast and consistent visual style — the very building blocks that Hearst and Pulitzer's Sunday color pages established as the grammar later collected into the first comic books.