Polly and Her Pals — 1922-05-02

Four panels follow Paw, Polly, and a top-hatted companion arriving late to a piano recital. A doorman refuses them entry; Paw pleads; the gag lands in the final panel when the doorman confides he dares not unlock the door because "the hull audience would rush out." Sterrett's draftsmanship is already confident here — hatched frock coats, expressive silhouettes, speech balloons tightly integrated into the compositions. Launched in 1912 as a Hearst daily strip, *Polly and Her Pals* was among the first newspaper comics to develop a stable, recurring cast with a distinct visual personality. These syndicated strips — running in millions of households before comic books existed as objects — invented the panel grammar, the balloon conventions, and the recurring-character contract that comic books would later inherit wholesale.