Polly and Her Pals — 1920-09-30

Four panels show Polly and a male companion admiring a harbor from a boat deck; Pa Ashur, hiding below, is ordered to drop anchor and refuses — then is launched skyward when something mechanical flings him loose, landing with a "PLINK." Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, and by 1920 its clean linework, expressive silhouettes, and tight comic timing were already influencing a generation of cartoonists. Daily strips like this one — reproduced by Newspaper Feature Service across hundreds of papers — formed the direct structural ancestor of the comic book: recurring characters, sequential panels, speech balloons, and a visual punchline engineered across a narrow horizontal space. Pa Ashur's slapstick became the strip's true center of gravity.