Polly and Her Pals

Six panels follow a bundled pair of men ice-skating under a crescent moon, trading dialect-heavy complaints about weak ankles, loose skates, and the need for someone to hold them upright. A third character arrives carrying matches; the final panel pulls back to reveal two women observers delivering the dry punchline — ladies, one declares, are "entirely non-suspicious." Sterrett's ink work is confident: thick outlines, silhouetted winter trees, and expressive bundled figures that read instantly despite minimal linework. Launched in 1912 in the *New York Evening Journal*, *Polly and Her Pals* ran until 1958, making it one of the longest-lived American newspaper strips. Sterrett later pushed the Sunday page toward near-abstract Art Deco design — a formal ambition that influenced generations of cartoonists working in the panel-and-balloon grammar these early strips essentially invented.