Polly and Her Pals — 1922-12-25

Two panels under the banner *So Say All the Perkins Family*. In the left panel, the entire household — stout Pa, angular Ma, assorted relatives — wrestles a folding table or cot into submission amid cheerful chaos. The right panel reveals why: the contraption becomes an easel displaying a hand-lettered sign reading "Polly and Her Pals wish you one and all a Merry Christmas." Cliff Sterrett's line is loose and rubbery, his figures expressively grotesque. Launched in 1912, *Polly and Her Pals* pioneered the domestic-comedy strip format and later became celebrated for Sterrett's bold Cubist-influenced Sunday pages — visual experiments appearing years before comic books existed, proving the newspaper page itself was the laboratory where sequential art found its grammar.