Polly and Her Pals — September 3, 1920

Four horizontal panels play out a beach-side running gag: Pa bets a dollar that a persistent suitor can't win Polly over with words; the young man kneels and proposes, receiving a flat "No!"; Pa declares him "squelched," but Polly calls the fellow "a person of pep"; in the final panel the suitor turns the tables, asking Polly to let *him* be hers — and Pa demands payment. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, eventually developing one of the most geometrically adventurous drawing styles in American comics. This daily strip belongs to the syndicated newspaper page tradition — the true seedbed of the comic book — where artists like Sterrett, McManus, and Herriman forged the visual grammar of sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring cast that defined the medium.