Polly and Her Pals — 1922-03-07

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* daily strip, headlined "And Ashur's Going to Live Up to His Motto," runs five panels tracking the hapless Ashur through a darkly comic suicide attempt. His wife and a neighbor react with alarm as a dapper stranger explains that Rosie has refused Ashur, driving him to commit suicide; Ashur himself—wild-haired, rubbery-limbed—rebuffs intervention, noting that poison, drowning, a gun, and a rope have all failed him. The final panel delivers the punchline: his motto is "Never Say Die." Sterrett's loose brushwork, expressive distortion, and brisk balloon placement exemplify the daily newspaper strip's mature visual grammar—the same Hearst and Syndicate pages that directly supplied the reprint content for the first true comic books of the 1930s.