Polly and Her Pals

Four panels track a domestic dispute over a cat: a woman warns that the doctor ordered 'Kitty' kept from Delicia's room because cats carry disease; a rotund, blustering man ridicules the idea ('Who ever heard tell of a cat with measles?'); he laughs uproariously at what he calls 'putty dawgone rich' nonsense; the final panel delivers the punchline silently — the cat sneezes explosively, sending furniture flying. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, and its sharp domestic comedy and increasingly geometric, Art Deco-inflected draftsmanship made it one of the most visually inventive strips of the early newspaper comics era — that dense ecosystem of daily and Sunday pages from which the comic book, with its panels, speech balloons, and recurring cast, would directly descend.