Polly and Her Pals — November 3, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 and became one of the most visually inventive strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily — titled "Tommy's Intentions Were Otherwise" — works a classic misunderstanding gag: a woman extracts a promise not to tell Tommy something; her rotund companion insists he'll handle it; Tommy confronts a large man he assumes wronged Polly, threatening violence; the final panel reveals the stranger only wanted to sell Tommy a rug. Sterrett's draftsmanship is confident and loose, his figures round and kinetic, his speech balloons packed with vernacular dialogue. Distributed by Newspaper Feature Service, *Polly and Her Pals* belongs to the generation of syndicated strips that established recurring characters, sequential panel grammar, and the visual storytelling language comics still use today.