Polly and Her Pals — "Ashuur Is Qualified for the Job, All Right"

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* daily strip follows Ashuur's ambition to become a movie actor. Across four panels, Polly's father dismisses the young man's claims of experience; Ashuur counters by reciting exactly how Hollywood treats its film stars — kicked downstairs, thrown out windows — knowledge he's acquired firsthand. The final panel's punchline reveals he's been deliberately accumulating bumps and bruises all summer, paying off an installment-plan piano through sheer physical suffering. Sterrett's draftsmanship is precise and economical: angular figures, bold blacks, expressive silhouettes. Launched in 1912 in the *New York Evening Telegram*, *Polly* was among the earliest newspaper strips to sustain recurring domestic characters across years of daily continuity — the very serialized format and visual grammar that would directly seed the first comic book collections of the 1930s.