Polly and Her Pals — July 20, 1922

Four panels unfold a domestic gag: Pa, battered and bandaged from some prior mishap, receives help from a small child lugging a 85-cent package; Polly greets a caller at the door, effusively declaring her father 'a peach' and herself 'everlastingly indebted'; the final panel reveals Pa recoiling in comic alarm — 'That's jess wot I was afraid of — confound it!' Sterrett's linework crackles with exaggerated poses and kinetic squiggles suggesting shock. Launched in 1912, *Polly and Her Pals* was among the first daily strips to develop a true ensemble cast around a recurring female lead. Sterrett's increasingly abstract, Cubist-influenced draftsmanship in later years would make the strip a benchmark of formal ambition within the newspaper page — the direct ancestor of the comic book format.