Polly and Her Pals — 1922-11-11

A four-panel daily strip by Cliff Sterrett, *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 and ran until 1958, making it one of the longest-lived strips of the newspaper era. Here, Pa—hat in hand, sheepish—explains to Polly why he missed a pool tournament, then encounters a visitor named Mr. Perkins who asks to borrow a five-dollar bill; Pa cheerfully obliges, only to reveal his entire social circle is at the Pool and Poker Club. Sterrett's crosshatched figures, expressive body language, and tightly timed gag structure demonstrate the visual grammar newspaper comic artists were codifying in the early 1920s—the same dailies and Sunday pages whose reprinted collections, beginning with *Famous Funnies* (1933), invented the comic book as a format.