Polly and Her Pals — March 18, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 as one of the first newspaper strips built around a recurring cast of domestic characters. This four-panel daily follows Sambo and Luke, two older men, who encounter Polly wearing a backless evening gown. Their sputtering, wide-eyed reactions carry the gag: one asks if this is her 'coming-out dress,' the other defends her with deadpan logic — she looks like she might 'come out of it any minute.' Sterrett's draftsmanship is confident and economical, the speech balloons cleanly integrated into action. Strips like this one, syndicated nationally and later collected into proto-anthologies, directly seeded the comic book format that would crystallize by the late 1930s.