From the exhibition
Polly and Her Pals — November 28, 1922
· Cliff Sterrett, 1922

Four panels of Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* — a strip launched in 1912 that ran until 1958 — follow a domestic comic turn. Two women on a sofa fret over identifying Pa's mysterious companion; a broadly drawn broker is then introduced to a parlor gathering; the third panel reveals he owns 55% of the 'New Amalgamated Mop Company'; the finale names him 'Perkins, the Wall Street Mop Magnate.' Sterrett's draftsmanship here is relatively conventional, predating his celebrated Cubist-influenced later style. *Polly and Her Pals* belongs to the first generation of syndicated newspaper strips — alongside *Krazy Kat* and *Bringing Up Father* — whose recurring characters, panel sequences, and speech balloons collectively assembled the visual language that comic books would later inherit wholesale.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain