Polly and Her Pals — September 14, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 and ran for decades, making it one of the longest-lived newspaper comic strips of the early twentieth century. This daily strip shows a woman reacting in alarm as an unseen scuffle erupts nearby; a man explains he is separating two fighters, only to discover the brawlers are his own kin — the gag resolving in a final panel of flying fists and a shouted "Gangway!" Sterrett's draftsmanship is crisp and economical: expressive silhouettes, kinetic action lines, and snappy balloon dialogue compressed into four panels. Newspaper dailies like this one — syndicated nationally through Newspaper Feature Service — were the direct physical and commercial forerunners of the comic book, establishing panel sequencing, recurring cast, and speech-balloon grammar that defined the medium.