Polly and Her Pals — 1922-06-07

Four panels track a domestic interrogation: a woman with a questionnaire demands that Pa fill it out, asking where he married Ma. Pa's honest answer — "Derned if I know!" — escalates through bafflement to slapstick chaos when he mishears "where" as "why." Sterrett's draftsmanship is loose and elastic, figures rubbery with exaggerated gesture, speech balloons driving the comedic rhythm panel to panel. *Polly and Her Pals* launched in the *New York Evening Telegram* in 1912 and ran for decades, its domestic comedy formula typical of the newspaper daily strip that was then codifying the visual language — sequential panels, integrated dialogue, recurring cast — that would directly seed the comic book format of the 1930s.