Polly and Her Pals — 1920-09-08

Four panels follow a salesman pitching Pa — the gruff, bald patriarch — on a "silent typewriter," only for Pa to counter that he'll pay handsomely if the man can stop Polly chewing gum and powdering her nose. Sterrett's draftsmanship is already assured: exaggerated postures, bold ink masses, and speech balloons that carry the timing of a vaudeville exchange. *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 as one of the Hearst syndicate's flagship dailies, and Sterrett would later push its Sunday pages toward near-abstract Art Deco design — among the most formally adventurous work in American newspaper comics. Those syndicated strips, distributed coast to coast, directly supplied the filler pages that early comic-book publishers reprinted, making artists like Sterrett unacknowledged architects of the medium itself.