Polly and Her Pals — August 1922

Four panels set at the surf's edge: two women lying in the shallows exchange gossip about a Mrs. Swift's auto accident, trading lines like "Awful, me eye!" and "She an' the car rolled down an embankment together, didn't they?" The gag lands in the final panel — someone knocked the hats off *both* of them. Sterrett's draftsmanship is loose and confident, waves rendered in scratchy crosshatch, figures broadly caricatured. Launched in 1912, *Polly and Her Pals* ran into the 1950s and helped establish the daily newspaper strip as a self-sufficient narrative form — recurring cast, consistent visual voice, punchline rhythm — the direct structural ancestor of the comic book page that would emerge two decades later.