Polly and Her Pals — 1922-10-16

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* (launched 1912) is one of the great daily strips of the American newspaper page. This four-panel daily follows the family's reaction to a piece of news — Polly has refused the young doctor who'd been courting her. The older women move from shock to tentative approval ('Good!' / 'Very, very good!') before the punchline lands: he has sent Polly a bill for eighty-seven house calls. Sterrett's brushwork is loose and kinetic; characters tumble off chairs with rubbery expressiveness. Strips like this one — serialized, character-driven, built on recurring domestic comedians — were the direct precursors of the comic book, establishing panel-to-panel rhythm, speech balloons, and the returnable cast that readers would later find stapled between covers.