Polly and Her Pals — 1923-01-01

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 as one of the earliest recurring-character newspaper strips, establishing the daily comic page as a mass medium that would directly seed the comic book format of the 1930s. This New Year's Day daily strip shows Pa — the strip's rotund, hapless patriarch — tunneling headlong through a massive snowdrift, emerging triumphant beside a "Happy New Year!" sign in the final panel, literalizing the headline motto *If You Dig In, You Can Dig Out*. Sterrett's ink work is confident and spare: four horizontal panels, clean silhouettes against hatched snow and sky, the figure's tumbling momentum carrying the eye left to right. The gag is pure physical comedy, timed across the panel sequence with the efficiency that made newspaper strips the era's dominant popular art form.