Polly and Her Pals — "Vengeance"

Four panels of kinetic slapstick: a stout, top-hatted figure (Paw) vents fury at the man who invented crossword puzzles — a craze then convulsing American households — and spots him on the street. A chase erupts, figures tumble across a dock in a tangle of plaid knickers and flailing limbs, and the final panel resolves in a muddy pond splash, punctuated by a floating question mark. Sterrett's draftsmanship is unmistakable: bold diagonal speed lines, exaggerated foreshortening, and speech balloons integrated tightly into the action. Launched in 1912 in the *New York Evening Telegram*, *Polly and Her Pals* pioneered domestic-comedy continuity and influenced a generation of cartoonists. Sterrett's fluid panel-to-panel pacing — characters physically carrying momentum across borders — helped establish the visual grammar that newspaper strips handed directly to the first comic books.