Polly and Her Pals — 1922-06-16

Four panels, black-and-white ink. A job applicant mentions experience with 'Palette'; Ma mishears and demands 'Who's Palette?'; the son explains — 'Palette the Painter'; Ma asks about potatoes; the final panel erupts in the strip's signature slapstick as water or food flies. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, making it one of America's longest-running newspaper comic strips. Sterrett's draftsmanship grew increasingly geometric and Art Deco through the 1920s-30s, but even this relatively early daily shows his clean linework and gift for domestic farce built around misunderstanding. Newspaper dailies like this one — syndicated nationwide by services such as Newspaper Feature Service — were the direct precursor to the comic book, their panel grids and speech balloons establishing the visual language that print anthologies would soon inherit.