Polly and Her Pals — 1922-06-28

Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, and by 1922 it had become one of the most visually adventurous strips in American papers. This daily shows Polly's suitor stammering to her father that she is "the very breath of my life" — whereupon Pop, deadpan, threatens to catch him holding his breath again. Four compact panels carry the gag cleanly: doorway introduction, awkward declaration, father's mock-outrage, pratfall exit. Sterrett's brushwork is loose and confident, his characters rubbery but expressive. Newspaper dailies like this one were the direct ancestor of the comic book: they trained readers in panel-to-panel sequence, speech balloons, and recurring casts — the entire visual grammar that anthology reprint titles would codify into a new medium within two decades.