Polly and Her Pals — December 11, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in 1912, is one of the longest-running and most visually inventive strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily follows the family's classic gag structure: Pa, rocking in his chair, hears Polly announce that their stock — Amalgamated Mops — has jumped sixty points. He erupts in celebration, then freezes, staggers, and collapses flat on the floor (the 'PLOP' panel is pure slapstick economy). The punchline: he just thought of the income tax he'll have to pay. Sterrett's loose, confident linework and expressive figures reflect his Art Deco period evolution. Newspaper dailies like this one, syndicated nationwide, directly supplied the page-count, recurring characters, and sequential panel grammar that early comic book publishers simply reprinted — making strips like *Polly* the literal raw material of the comic book form.