Polly and Her Pals

Four panels set at the beach: a stout, mustachioed father (Paw) and a short male companion wade in the surf while a woman scolds Paw for writing "mushy letters" to Polly the previous winter. A stylish young woman — presumably Polly — appears mid-strip, prompting "Dear me! Whom have we here?" The strip concludes with an awkward handshake introduction, "Pleased t'meetcha ole top!" Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the Hearst syndicate, making it one of the longest-running early American comic strips. Its angular, Art Deco-inflected draftsmanship and snappy vernacular dialogue represent the daily newspaper strip at its most formally inventive — the very format whose accumulated pages would, by the 1930s, be bundled into the first comic books.