Polly and Her Pals

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* debuted in 1912 and quickly became one of the most formally inventive strips in American newspapers. This daily strip runs six panels: a neighbor observes that Pa has grown irritable since quitting smoking; Pa bullies Maggie off the rocking chair; scolds Ashur for biting his nails; then demands his newspaper from Mrs. Perkins before being physically ejected by his daughter. The gag is pure domestic farce built on escalating rudeness. Sterrett's draftsmanship is loose and kinetic, his figures rubbery and expressive. Newspaper strips like this one were the direct ancestors of the comic book — syndicated dailies established recurring casts, sequential panel grammar, and the speech balloon conventions that page-format comics would inherit wholesale two decades later.