Polly and Her Pals — July 10, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* daily strip follows the hapless 'Pa' through a four-panel train-fare fiasco: he's lost his ticket, can't pay, can't find the ticket in his scattered belongings, and admits he doesn't even know where he's going. Sterrett's loose, rubbery linework and expressive characters — the imperious conductor, the flustered Pa dissolving into visual chaos — show early newspaper comics at their most kinetic. Launched in 1912, *Polly and Her Pals* is one of the longest-running strips of the golden newspaper era, predating the comic book format that would eventually repackage exactly these daily and Sunday pages. Sterrett's bold patterns and fractured compositions anticipate cubist-influenced cartooning by decades.