Polly and Her Pals — 1922-08-21

Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, making it one of the longest-running continuity strips of the early newspaper era. This daily strip, titled *That's What Pa Likes Best*, runs four panels: Pa sawing away at a violin while reading sheet music, his squawking prompting a pained reaction from another figure, then a seated conversation with Polly about the violinist "Ash," and finally Polly's deadpan verdict — she likes how he puts the fiddle back in the box. Sterrett's draftsmanship is already fluid and economical here, his figures loose but precisely expressive. Newspaper dailies like this one were the direct seedbed of the comic book format — recurring characters, sequential panels, speech balloons — the visual language assembled strip by strip across America's morning papers.