Polly and Her Pals — March 23, 1922

In this four-panel daily strip titled *Ashur Didn't Want To Take Any Chances*, Polly recites to a companion her exacting checklist for a future husband — brains, beauty, brawn, tenderness, talent, honesty — while a would-be suitor eavesdrops from behind the sofa. Catching the ideal list, he rehearses a lion-bold, lamb-gentle, Solomon-wise speech, only to be cut off mid-declaration. The final panel finds him sweating: if she ever sees through him, he mutters, he's a 'goner.' Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, and by the early 1920s his draftsmanship — angular figures, jazz-age interiors, confident brushwork — was influencing a generation of cartoonists. These newspaper dailies, syndicated nationally, provided the recurring characters, sequential panels, and speech balloons that would directly scaffold the first comic books of the 1930s.