Polly and Her Pals — 1922-01-07

Four panels, black-and-white daily ink. A stout, rumpled Paw Perkins crouches before his imposing wife, who reminds him she is his wife and he had better not forget it. Panel two: Paw mutters he has a swell chance of forgetting. Panel three: a stylishly dressed Polly asks whether Pa ever wishes he were free to marry again. Pa's emphatic 'Nope!' sends him tumbling. Final panel: he lands in a heap declaring he is 'Jess Free!' — meaning free of the floor, not matrimony. Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the Hearst syndicate, and by the 1920s his loose, expressive linework and compressed domestic comedy exemplified the daily newspaper strip format whose panel-and-balloon conventions would directly scaffold the first comic books of the 1930s.