Polly and Her Pals — 1922-07-06

Four panels on a beach: a statuesque woman in a swimsuit strolls past a cluster of ogling men who argue in slang — *'tis / 'taint / oh boy* — about whether the locale is a 'great neck' or a 'little neck.' Roped into the dispute, a stranger concedes 'rubber neck,' the punchline landing on the woman's mortified exit. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, eventually developing one of the most formally inventive styles in American comics — bold silhouettes, Art Deco geometry, and expressive crowd choreography visible even in this compact daily strip. Such syndicated dailies were the raw material from which the first comic books — reprints of newspaper pages — were assembled in the early 1930s.