Polly and Her Pals — 1922-02-07

Four panels of pure newspaper-strip economy: a woman at a window hears rhythmic tapping from the parson's yard; neighbors watch a man shingling his garage roof; climbing up for a closer look, they're asked if they're interested in carpentry — 'No we ain't, sir' — and the final panel reveals they came only to hear what a parson says when he hits his finger with a hammer. Clifford Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, building one of the era's most visually inventive strips. His angular compositions and expressive crowd-reaction panels demonstrate the visual shorthand — sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, recurring cast — that newspaper syndicates refined into the direct formal ancestor of the comic book.