Polly and Her Pals — 1922-06-21

Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, and by the early 1920s it had become one of the most visually inventive strips in American newspapers. This four-panel daily follows Ash, a stout figure in plaid, who is summoned to lunch but insists on silence — he is hunting. Asked what he is hunting, he admits he has no idea yet. Sterrett's draftsmanship is loose and energetic: thick brushwork, trees that curve like rubber, figures caught mid-gesture. The strip's comedy turns entirely on Ash's hapless self-importance. Daily newspaper strips like this one — syndicated coast to coast, collected into pamphlets — directly established the panel-by-panel sequential grammar that comic books would codify in the 1930s.