Polly and Her Pals — January 21, 1922

Still It's My Choice opens with a woman challenging the dapper Mr. Perkins on his claim to bachelorhood by choice; across four tight panels his housemaid, a stumpy figure with exaggerated dialect lettering, and a street acquaintance progressively demolish the conceit — every girl in town has turned him down. The final panel delivers the punchline: a "Ladies' Choice" sign in a shop window. Sterrett's linework is crisp and angular, his characters rubbery caricatures alive with kinetic posture. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in the *New York Evening Telegram* in 1912, was among the earliest strips to develop a true ensemble cast and consistent visual rhythm — the daily and Sunday newspaper strip being the direct ancestor from which the comic book format, with its sequential panels and speech balloons, directly descended.