Polly and Her Pals — 1917-04-09

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* (Hearst, 1912–1958) runs here as a black-and-white daily. Four panels track a midnight icebox raid: a figure slips from bed while the household sleeps, creeps downstairs, and triggers a flashlight challenge — 'Halt! Who goes there?' — only to find the whole family already crowded around the open refrigerator, one character bellowing 'Fust come fust served!' The strip's header gag, *They're Reducing, But Not Between Meals*, frames the punchline. Sterrett's loose, energetic linework and dense cross-hatching were early proof that newspaper comics could sustain a consistent visual personality. Daily strips like this one — syndicated, sequential, character-driven — were the direct commercial and formal ancestors of the gathered reprint pamphlets that became the American comic book.