Polly and Her Pals — 1922-10-31

Four panels follow a reading lesson gone gloriously wrong. An older man reclines while a costumed figure — apparently Neewah — attempts to read aloud from a book. The text yields only the word "BARQUE," repeated with mounting frustration and bafflement across two panels, until the final panel erupts in ecstatic howling and a triumphant "HOT DAWG!" Sterrett's draftsmanship is angular and restless, his figures rubbery, his sound effects practically airborne. *Polly and Her Pals* debuted in 1912 and became one of the most formally inventive strips of the early comic page — Sterrett pushed panel geometry and decorative abstraction further than almost any contemporary. Daily strips like this one were the direct seedbed of the comic book format: recurring characters, sequential panels, speech balloons as narrative engine.