Polly and Her Pals — Daily Strip, November 24, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's Polly and Her Pals ran from 1912 to 1958, making it one of the longest-lived American newspaper strips. This four-panel daily follows Paw Perkins attempting to conduct business quietly while a Dictaphone and then an automobile horn sabotage his plans — the final panel erupting in overlapping HONK! HONK! sound effects and domestic chaos. Sterrett's linework is dense and kinetic, with crosshatching, expressive figures, and speech balloons that crowd the panels with comic energy. Newspaper dailies like this one were the direct precursor to the comic book format: syndicated strips trained readers in sequential panel grammar, recurring characters, and the integration of text and image that would define the medium when publishers began reprinting and then originating strip-format stories as bound pamphlets through the 1930s.