Polly and Her Pals — 1922-06-09

Four panels track a domestic comedy: a young man named Ashur announces his engagement to Gladys Perkins, prompting his elder — likely father figure Paw — to declare he was thirty before he thought of taking a wife. Ashur's deflating punchline lands in the final panel: he isn't thinking of taking *anybody's* wife. Sterrett's linework is confident and economical, figures rendered with rubbery exaggeration and bold black-and-white contrast typical of early American newspaper dailies. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in 1912 by Cliff Sterrett for the New York Evening Telegram and syndicated nationally, is among the strips whose recurring cast, weekly continuity, and inventive panel compositions directly shaped the anthology reprint format that became the comic book by the 1930s.