Polly and Her Pals — 1925-03-06

In four tightly composed panels, Polly models a new fur coat while her companion Alice admires it; Polly then confesses she feels sorry for "the poor brute who was skinned to get it." A stout, puzzled male figure overhears, responds warmly, and closes the gag with a tipped hat. Sterrett's draftsmanship is already distinctive: bold silhouettes, decorative Art Deco furniture, and expressive caricature distinguish the strip from its contemporaries. Launched in 1912 in the *New York Evening Telegram*, *Polly and Her Pals* was among the earliest daily strips to build comedy around a recurring cast and domestic situation—exactly the model that syndicated newspaper comics exported nationwide, supplying the page-layout conventions, balloon lettering, and serialized characters that proto-comic-book publishers would later reassemble into pamphlet form.