Polly and Her Pals

Four panels follow Pa Perkins meeting three visitors Polly has brought home. Pa dismisses them as clowns; they bristle and announce themselves as the Tumble Bros., "high-class acrobats" — then promptly collapse into a heap demonstrating their act. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, making it one of the longest-running American comic strips. Sterrett's draftsmanship grew increasingly bold through the 1920s, his figures built from angular, almost Cubist shapes. The daily strip format shown here — four tight panels, punchy dialogue in hand-lettered balloons, a visual punchline in the final frame — was the engine that drove newspaper circulation wars and, when these pages were later reprinted and stapled together, produced the first comic books.