Polly and Her Pals — "Delicia Disagrees With Paw"

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 and ran until 1958, making it one of American newspaper comics' longest-lived strips. This daily strip opens with Paw calling on Miss Ritzy only to be rebuffed; he grumbles to Uncle Sammy that she's the biggest snob he's ever encountered. The final panel delivers the gag: Delicia, who has apparently never witnessed Ritzy's coldness toward her, cheerfully insists the woman is always perfectly lovely to *her*. Four clean panels carry the timing efficiently, relying on Sterrett's confident brushwork and expressive body language over elaborate backgrounds. Sterrett would later push his Sunday pages into near-Cubist decorative complexity, but these dailies show the stripped-down narrative economy that made newspaper comic strips the direct forerunner of the comic book format.