Polly and Her Pals — 1922-05-13

In this four-panel daily, Polly's blustering father Mike reacts with shock to some news, while Polly — seated with exaggerated composed indignation — tells her sister she never wants to see a suitor's "ugly mug again." The final panel delivers the punch: she had accepted him just the night before. Sterrett's draftsmanship is crisp and kinetic; Mike's checked trousers and wildly expressive body language became visual signatures of the strip, which debuted in 1912 and ran for decades. *Polly and Her Pals* is notable for Sterrett's later experiments with Cubist-influenced backgrounds, but even here the panel-to-panel rhythm, speech balloons, and recurring cast demonstrate the newspaper daily strip's role as the direct ancestor of the comic book format.