Polly and Her Pals

Four panels follow a round, walrus-mustached man and a slender young woman emerging from the surf, then dodging a police beach closure by slipping into numbered changing cabanas — the old man gleefully noting the cops can't hurt what they don't know about. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, making it one of the earliest American strips built around a recurring domestic cast. Sterrett's draftsmanship — rubbery figures, bold ink outlines, expressive staging across tight horizontal panels — exemplifies the visual grammar newspaper artists were codifying daily: sequential action, speech balloons carrying timing and tone, and character design legible at thumbnail scale. These syndicated dailies were the direct ancestors of the comic book form.