Polly and Her Pals — "Paw Pines For Moral Support"

Cliff Sterrett's daily strip follows the hapless Paw Perkins, whose broken-down car (plate 2223 visible in panel one) prompts him to track down the salesman who sold it to him. Four tightly sequenced panels carry the gag: Paw spots the dealer Mr. Brown on the street, they exchange cheerful pleasantries, and Paw then demands Brown repeat every sales pitch he made — so Paw can use it to psych himself back into optimism about the wretched vehicle. Sterrett's crosshatched plaid costuming, rubbery figure-work, and expressive speech balloons exemplify the draftsmanship that made newspaper comic strips — running daily and Sunday in syndication from the 1890s onward — the direct formal ancestor of the comic book, establishing the panel grid, recurring cast, and balloon-driven dialogue that would define the medium.