Polly and Her Pals — 1922-02-13

Clifford Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* ran in newspapers from 1912 until 1958, making it one of the longest-lived American comic strips. This February 1922 daily shows Polly's father receiving job-hunting advice — 'breeze right in and sweep him off his feet' — then attempting exactly that on a secretary and an employer, only to be thrown out the door with instructions to close it behind him. Sterrett's four-panel flow is confident and economical: expressive figure drawing, lively crosshatching, and speech balloons that carry the comic rhythm. Daily strips like this one were the raw material from which comic books emerged; publishers in the 1930s simply collected and reprinted such newspaper pages, discovering readers would pay for them bound.