Polly and Her Pals — 1922-11-23

Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, making it one of the longest-running family strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily, headlined *A Narrow Escape, but the Secret's Still Safe*, follows Paw Perkins and a companion who have apparently found or recovered some prized object — guarded under a hat on a pedestal — only to be nearly caught showing it off. The final panel pivots to Polly chatting breezy pleasantries, oblivious. Sterrett's linework is confident and economical: bold black strokes, expressive rubber-limbed figures, and speech balloons whose dialect spelling drives characterization. Strips like this one — syndicated daily, read coast to coast — were the direct seedbed of the comic book, their panel grids, recurring casts, and visual shorthand becoming the inherited grammar of the medium.