Polly and Her Pals — "A Bad Oversight On Somebody's Part"

Cliff Sterrett's daily strip unfolds across five tight panels: Polly alerts Pa that the new cook has broken her Japanese vase; Pa cross-examines the maid Violet; the cook confesses the dog did it; Pa erupts demanding which dog; and the final panel reveals the family dog launching Pa off his chair in a slapstick pratfall. Sterrett's brushwork is confident — bold blacks, expressive silhouettes, figures caught mid-gesture. Launched in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, *Polly and Her Pals* was among the earliest strips to build comedy around a recurring domestic ensemble rather than a single protagonist. Sterrett later developed one of newspaper comics' most geometrically adventurous Sunday page styles, making him a pivotal figure in the visual language that daily strips exported directly into the first comic book reprints of the 1930s.