Polly and Her Pals — August 26, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* runs four panels under the header 'A Tight Squeeze, but Pa'll Pull Through.' Pa, the strip's put-upon patriarch, has apparently been injured in a car mishap; Ma drags him to the doctor while a child scolds him in panel one. The doctor's verdict, delivered deadpan in panel four: Pa's right thumb is in perfect condition — the rest of him, presumably not. Sterrett's loosely cross-hatched linework and expressive rubber-limbed figures show the draftsmanly confidence he brought to Hearst papers from 1912 onward. Daily strips like this one were the direct raw material of the first comic books, which were simply reprinted newspaper pages; the recurring cast, speech balloons, and sequential gag logic Sterrett refined here became the template every subsequent cartoonist inherited.