Polly and Her Pals — 1922-08-15

Four panels titled *Not a Chance, Says Ma, No, Not One*. An old man spots a doctor's car outside; inside, a stylish young woman — Polly — suffers an indigestion attack. A thin, angular doctor prescribes laughing heartily before and after each meal. Ma, the squat, formidable matriarch, delivers the punchline: she cooks all the meals and washes all the dishes — when exactly would she laugh? Sterrett's draftsmanship is already confident here: elastic figure-drawing, expressive silhouettes, speech balloons integrated cleanly into the action. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in 1912, was among the first newspaper strips to develop a true ensemble cast around a single recurring heroine, and Sterrett later pushed its Sunday pages toward near-abstract Art Deco design — an influence felt across twentieth-century cartooning.