Polly and Her Pals — July 11, 1922

Four panels, beach setting: two slim figures open the strip remarking on the heat before Aunt Maggie — an enormous woman in a dotted swimsuit — dominates the remaining panels. A small dog nips at her heels; she threatens to call a cop; a prone sunbather finally deadpans, "You're the only shady spot on the beach." The gag is pure vaudeville timing, built entirely through Sterrett's confident brushwork and graduated close-ups. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, and by the early 1920s his daily and Sunday strips were pushing toward the decorative abstraction that would define his mature style. These syndicated newspaper strips — with their recurring casts, speech balloons, and panel-to-panel continuity — established the visual grammar that the comic book format would later inherit wholesale.