Polly and Her Pals — 1925-01-05

Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, and by 1925 it had become one of the most visually inventive strips in American papers. This daily strip, titled "Truly Named, Says Paw," runs four panels: two family members argue over a color — one insisting a bonnet is yellow, the other that it is red — while a third calls the first an ignoramus; the fourth panel cuts to Paw, isolated in shadow behind curtains, muttering that all he has heard since the family caught "the fever" is cross words. The gag turns on crossword-puzzle mania, then sweeping the country. Sterrett's bold black masses and angular Art Deco staging show how newspaper dailies were actively inventing the visual grammar — timed panel rhythm, expressive silhouette — that the comic book would later inherit wholesale.