Polly and Her Pals — "Pa Prophesies Ashur's Fate"

Clifford Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* (Hearst, 1912–1958) is one of the longest-running American newspaper strips, and this four-panel daily shows its characteristic engine: Pa, the blustering patriarch, outflanked by his tall, fashion-plate wife and daughter. Here Pa smells what he calls poison gas, is twice told to mind his own business, then delivers a deadpan prophecy — smoke 5,000 bands of a particular cigarette brand and win a silver saxophone; smoke 500 and you'll be playing a golden harp. The final panel's *plod* punctuates the joke perfectly. Sterrett's draftsmanship — angular figures, economical crosshatching, expressive silhouettes — exemplifies the daily newspaper strip as the direct ancestor of the comic book, its panel grammar and speech-balloon syntax becoming foundational to the medium.