Polly and Her Pals — 1922-03-03

Four panels, titled *Teddie Makes It Final, Oh, My, Yes!* A suitor kneels before a lumpy armchair where a woman sits firm: she refuses him flat. He collapses dramatically — 'Oh! Dear. I Shall Die of a Busted Heart!' A second woman reassures him that handsome, clever girls will surely marry him. His reply: he doesn't want a handsome, clever girl. Final panel: arms outstretched, he declares 'I Want You!' Sterrett's chunky, Cubist-inflected figures and loose ink line were already distinctive by 1922. *Polly and Her Pals*, syndicated from 1912, was among the earliest daily strips to build a recurring cast around domestic comedy. These syndicated dailies — printed in millions of papers — supplied the page-layout conventions, panel grids, and speech-balloon grammar that direct-predecessor comic books would simply reformat and bind.