Polly and Her Pals — 1925-03-13

In this four-panel daily, the housekeeper Violet informs the returning father Paw that Missus Perkins has gone to the movies with Mister Ashur and Polly has gone out with Mister Swaffle — leaving no one home for dinner. Paw, initially dismayed, brightens when Violet offers to set a proper supper of roast chicken. The final panel shows him gleefully upending the table in theatrical joy, declaring it the first comfortable meal in twenty years. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for King Features; by the mid-1920s his draftsmanship had grown increasingly abstract — cubist-influenced patterning, kinetic figure distortion — making it among the most visually adventurous strips of the newspaper comic's formative era, the very medium from which the comic book would directly emerge.