Polly and Her Pals — 1922-06-10

Four panels follow a domestic comedy of noise: Polly practices piano (or sings) with wild abandon — speech balloons burst with phonetic yowling, "YAH HA-HA-HO! YEH HO-HO! HEE YAH OH!!" — while a monkey and an older woman react with escalating alarm. The final panel settles into dry punchline: the racket might prove useful "in case of fire or burglars." Sterrett's linework is fluid and loose, figures rubbery, expressions pushed to caricature. Launched in 1912 by Cliff Sterrett for the Hearst syndicate, *Polly and Her Pals* was among the first daily strips to develop a genuinely modernist graphic style — bold blacks, Art Deco geometry in later years. These syndicated dailies, reprinted and bundled through the 1920s–30s, directly seeded the format and economics of the comic book as a distinct medium.