Polly and Her Pals — 1922-12-01

Titled *It's 'Black Friday' for Pa*, this four-panel daily finds Pa Perkins — president of the Amalgamated Mop Co. — cornered by a nosy neighbor woman who learns he keeps a stock ticker in his den. Determined to see it, she forces her way in, only to be knocked flat by the chattering machine's ticker tape. Sterrett's draftsmanship is already adventurous: rubbery figures, energetic crosshatching, and sound effects rendered as physical objects. *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 and became one of the longest-running family strips in American newspapers. These syndicated dailies and Sunday pages — with their repeating casts, panel-by-panel continuity, and speech balloons — form the direct template from which the first comic books, reprinting exactly such strips, were assembled in the early 1930s.