Polly and Her Pals — "Paw Issues A Warning"

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* (launched in newspapers in 1912) follows the domestic comedies of the Perkins household. In this four-panel daily, Paw peers through a curtain asking who is with Polly in the parlor; the answer — "Young Cholly Chump" — sends him to the doorway, where the suitor is heard declaring Polly "the breath of my life." Paw's response, delivered stone-faced: "Don't ever let me ketch you holdin' your breath. Git me?" The gag pivots on literal wordplay. Sterrett's draftsmanship here is spare — strong silhouettes, minimal backgrounds — anticipating the geometric Art Deco boldness his Sunday pages would develop by decade's end. Daily strips like these, syndicated nationwide, trained readers in sequential panel grammar and speech balloons, laying the structural foundations that direct-sale comic books would later inherit wholesale.