Polly and Her Pals — 1922-03-25

Four panels, black ink, dry wit: Pa sneaks home in the small hours past a clock tower showing 4 a.m., is caught at the door by his wife Polly, who orders their guest Harry out. Pa insists the hour is "impossible" and trusts his pocket-watch over the clock — it reads ten. Polly, seated coolly, retorts that his watch must be wrong. The final panel shows Pa, hat spinning off his head in comic fright, reacting to a voice announcing he's been heard coming in. Sterrett's strip, launched 1912 in the *New York Evening Telegram*, pioneered the recurring domestic-comedy ensemble and the expressive squash-and-stretch figure style that influenced a generation of cartoonists shaping the visual language — speech balloons, sequential panel rhythm, reaction shots — that newspaper comics handed directly to the first comic books.