Polly and Her Pals — 1922-12-04

Four horizontal panels follow Pa Perkins through a comic misadventure involving a disguise — presumably a shave and fresh clothes — that renders him unrecognizable even to a caller at his own door. The strip's visual wit relies on Sterrett's elastic figure-work: rubbery limbs, expressive silhouettes, and a cat providing deadpan counterpoint throughout. Speech balloons carry thick dialectal spelling ('Haint 't'home!') that was standard comic-strip vernacular of the era. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram; by the 1920s its bold decorative style influenced a generation of cartoonists. Such daily strips — syndicated nationally, reprinted in collected pamphlets — directly seeded what would become the comic-book format, establishing panel sequencing, recurring casts, and balloon-driven dialogue as the medium's foundational grammar.