Polly and Her Pals

Four panels trace a domestic gag: Pa can't sleep, a doctor prescribes flea powder meant for the neighbor's howling dog, and Pa gets dosed accordingly. Sterrett draws his characters in a loose, rubbery line — exaggerated noses, plaid trousers, expressive hands — with speech balloons carrying the entire comic load. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the Hearst syndicate, making it one of the longest-running daily strips of the early twentieth century. These syndicated dailies and Sunday pages were the direct commercial ancestors of the comic book: publishers soon collected such strips into cheap pamphlet reprints, and the panel-by-panel grammar Sterrett and his contemporaries refined — sequential action, recurring cast, visual punchline — became the foundational language of the medium.