Polly and Her Pals — "That's When Pa Considered Himself Lucky"

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 and became one of the most formally adventurous strips in American newspaper syndication. This four-panel daily turns on a party gag: Pa has been dodging the hostess all evening; a second man escapes her and gloats — then discovers Pa has had the same luck. The final panel delivers the twist: the suffering dancer *is* the host. Sterrett works in confident cross-hatching, exaggerated silhouette, and sharp timing across the gutter. Newspaper dailies like this one were the direct material ancestor of the comic book — their recurring casts, sequential panels, and speech balloons established the visual grammar that comic books, arriving commercially in the 1930s, simply reprinted and then imitated.