Polly and Her Pals — 1922-10-26

Four panels follow Pa into a hat department, where a distracted saleswoman ignores him while flirting; she then sniffs that he might condescend to wait. Pa asks whether she has a hat like his; she recoils — *"No! Thank heavens! I haint!"* — and in the final panel Pa grins: if he had one like hers, he wouldn't wear it on a bet. Sterrett's brushwork is loose and energetic, his figures rubbery with expressive exaggeration. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in 1912 by the New York Evening Journal, was among the first newspaper strips to develop a stable ensemble cast across continuity gags. These syndicated dailies — produced before the comic book existed as a format — were the direct source material, reprinted in newsprint pamphlets, from which the comic book industry emerged in the 1930s.