Polly and Her Pals — 1917-07-28

Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, and this daily strip shows his comic machinery in full swing. Four panels follow Pa—short, bowler-hatted, perpetually outmaneuvered—investigating the neighborhood's "Daylight Lovers' Lane," where couples canoodle behind a striped fence immune from rubberneckers. Pa's theory: bite one to identify them. The resulting SMACK earns him a drubbing, and Polly's fashionable mother arrives to drag him home in disgrace. Sterrett's linework is crisp and angular; his speech balloons curve naturally into the composition. Strips like this one, syndicated nationwide and later collected into reprint pamphlets, are the direct ancestors of the comic book format—proof that the art form was already sophisticated years before stapled newsprint became a commercial category.