Polly and Her Pals — 1917-07-07

Four panels of Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* (syndicated by Newspaper Feature Service) play out a single running gag: Pa's scheme to use a handcuff as a law-enforcement tool backfires when the large, formidable Maggie snaps the free cuff onto her own wrist, making Pa her prisoner instead. Sterrett draws his characters in the broad, rubbery silhouette style common to pre-Jazz Age newspaper dailies — squat figures, exaggerated gestures, speech balloons carrying vernacular dialogue. Launched in 1912, the strip was among the generation of syndicated pages — alongside *Krazy Kat* and *Bringing Up Father* — whose recurring casts, sequential panels, and integrated text-image storytelling built the visual grammar that would directly feed the first comic books of the late 1930s.