Polly and Her Pals — 1922-03-29

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* began in 1912 and became one of the most visually inventive strips in American newspapers. This four-panel daily finds not Polly but her stout, flower-hatted mother improvising a car repair with a single hairpin after Pa despairs over an empty toolbox — the gag turning on Ma's unflappable practicality against Pa's helpless grumbling. Sterrett's brushwork is confident and loose, his figures rubbery and expressive, with crosshatching that builds form economically. Newspaper dailies like this one were the direct ancestors of the comic book: their recurring casts, sequential panels, and speech balloons established the visual grammar that anthology reprint volumes — *Famous Funnies* and its successors — would package and sell as a new medium by the early 1930s.