Polly and Her Pals — February 16, 1922

Clifford Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* ran from 1912 to 1958, making it one of the longest-lived strips of the newspaper era. This four-panel daily turns on a simple domestic reversal: a woman insists her husband mind his own business, whereupon he erupts in comic fury — only to be launched bodily offscreen in the final panel, his accordion-like striped legs flying. Sterrett's draftsmanship is already assured: fluid brushwork, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons that carry the timing like beats in vaudeville. Newspaper dailies such as this one — syndicated nationally, collected in cheap pamphlets — directly seeded the comic book format, proving that recurring characters, sequential panels, and visual shorthand for emotion could sustain a mass readership across years.