Polly and Her Pals — 1922-01-26

Four panels track a running gag on Jazz Age slang: a woman declares something the "cat's ankle," a gangly man counters with "bee's ears," and a third insists that attending both dances would be "the flea's knees." The fourth panel introduces a young man home from boarding school deploying fresh slang, met with the deadpan verdict: "quite the snake's hips." Sterrett's draftsmanship is confident — loose, rubbery figures, expressive silhouettes, speech balloons that carry comic timing. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in 1912, was among the first newspaper strips to build comedy around a recurring family ensemble. These syndicated daily and Sunday strips — economical in space, sophisticated in sequential art — established the visual grammar that comic books would directly inherit a decade later.