Polly and Her Pals — July 21, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* ran from 1912 to 1958, making it one of the longest-lived strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily, titled "Well, What More Could Ash Do," follows Polly's father Paw (Ashur Perkins) through a hat-shop gag: a woman marvels that he tracks his many hats without a system; he confidently retrieves one from a clerk, is challenged on ownership, insists it's his — then gets knocked flat when told the reason: it's the one *they* gave him. Sterrett's cross-hatched figures and kinetic final-panel pratfall show his debt to early animation. Strips like this one — syndicated to hundreds of dailies — supplied the pages that publishers would reprint to create the first true comic books in the 1930s.