Polly and Her Pals — June 2, 1925

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 and became one of the long-running fixtures of American newspaper syndication. This four-panel daily follows the family's comic domestic rhythm: Polly's father Pa Perkins, characteristically rumpled in plaid, is asked to entertain a visiting count while Polly dresses; a dapper French-accented caller requests a private word; Pa discovers the guests have left; and the punchline — he was pleasant because the count borrowed twenty dollars. Sterrett drew with clean ink economy and tight panel compositions, his speech balloons carrying distinct regional and ethnic voices as naturalistic shorthand. The newspaper daily strip was the laboratory where recurring characters, sequential panel logic, and the visual syntax of comics were first systematically developed — the direct ancestor of the comic book form.