Polly and Her Pals — 1925-02-14

Four panels show Paw, the strip's barrel-chested patriarch, chopping wood when he learns a subpoena server has returned. He greets the news with a cheerful "Good!" and orders the man "shown right in" — whereupon he wallops the server with the axe handle. Sterrett's draftsmanship is precise and kinetic: exaggerated postures, bold silhouettes, and expressive speed lines propel the punchline efficiently. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in the *New York Evening Journal* in 1912, was among the first strips to develop a true ensemble cast built around domestic comedy. Sterrett later pushed the strip toward geometric abstraction in backgrounds, influencing a generation of cartoonists. These syndicated daily and Sunday strips — shared across hundreds of papers — directly seeded the anthology reprint comic books of the 1930s.