Polly and Her Pals — Daily Strip

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* runs here as a daily strip titled "That's the Way Pa Dopes It Out." Four panels track a neighborhood rumor: Freddy Fresh swore he'd kiss Polly last night or die in the attempt. The punchline lands when Pa, reading his newspaper, notes no account of Freddy's death — and no account of the kiss either. Sterrett draws in a fluid, rounded pen style; speech balloons carry colloquial dialect spelling. Launched in 1912 in the *New York Evening Telegram*, *Polly* was among the earliest strips built around a recurring cast with continuing character relationships — precisely the narrative and visual conventions that, collected into newsprint pamphlets through the 1930s, became the comic book format.