Polly and Her Pals

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 as one of the great newspaper daily strips, its humor built on the comic misadventures of the Perkins household. Here, four panels follow Pa Perkins and a companion scheming to cadge their way onto a trip to Atlantic City. They consider bribing one of "the gals" to surrender her spot — Polly declares it "IMPOSSIBLE" — then a stylishly dressed woman materializes to announce "All things are possible," reducing Pa to stammering apology. Sterrett's draftsmanship is already confident: expressive silhouettes, punchy speech balloons, and crisp panel-to-panel rhythm that helped fix the visual grammar every comic book that followed would inherit.