Polly and Her Pals — No Escape for Paw!

Four panels track the hapless Paw as he attempts to escape his family's crossword-puzzle mania by retreating to his gramophone—only to have the radio announcer read last night's puzzle answers aloud. The final panel shows Paw literally stuffed headfirst into the horn, emitting faint *k-k* sounds. Sterrett's draftsmanship is immediately recognizable: angular figures, bold blacks, and expressive body language that carries gags without relying on faces. Launched in 1912 by King Features, *Polly and Her Pals* was among the earliest daily strips to build comedy around a recurring domestic ensemble. These newspaper dailies—syndicated coast to coast—supplied the page-layout conventions, panel sequencing, and speech-balloon grammar that comic books would directly inherit when publishers began reprinting and then originating strip-format work through the 1930s.