Polly and Her Pals — 1917-03-23

Four panels track a domestic squabble over Maggie's "Dance an' Grow Thin" exercise craze, with Pa Perkins objecting that potatoes cost $4.00 a bushel while the doctor endorses all the baked potatoes she likes. A tray-bearing servant is bowled aside as Maggie barrels through, and the final panel sends furniture flying. Sterrett's loose, energetic linework — rubbery figures, motion scribbles, overlapping word balloons — exemplifies the draftsmanship being forged daily in American newspaper syndication. Launched in 1912, *Polly and Her Pals* ran until 1958, its later Sunday pages becoming celebrated for near-abstract Art Deco backgrounds. These syndicated strips, reprinted in pamphlet collections, directly seeded the comic-book format that would formalize in the 1930s.