Polly and Her Pals — 1920-09-15

Four panels track a domestic scheme: Aunt Maggie plots to elope with Mr. Pecan while Pa and Ma sit comfortably in armchairs, bickering over whether Pa fears rival suitor Sam Perkins enough to move house. The strip pivots on Pa's sudden inspiration — they'll relocate before Pecan can follow — ending with him hollering for Polly to pack the pictures. Sterrett's chunky cross-hatching, expressive rubber-limbed figures, and tightly nested speech balloons show the daily newspaper strip at its grammatical maturity. Launched in 1912, *Polly and Her Pals* pioneered recurring ensemble comedy in the American comics page, and Sterrett later pushed the strip toward near-abstract Art Deco backgrounds. These syndicated dailies, reprinted in collected pamphlets, directly seeded the comic-book format of the 1930s.