Polly and Her Pals — 1928-09-15

"The Cook Gives Plain Warning" is a four-panel daily strip by Cliff Sterrett, creator of *Polly and Her Pals* (launched 1912). Here the household's rotund cook quietly quits, leaving Paw to attempt dinner — with predictably disastrous, smoke-billowing results. The final panel's punchline lands on Paw's sheepish admission that the cook *had* warned him, via a request for indigestion tablets he ignored. Sterrett's draftsmanship is assured: chunky crosshatching, expressive silhouettes, and kinetic sound-effect lettering (CLATTER, KLINK) drive the gag with economy. *Polly and Her Pals* pioneered bold graphic abstraction in American newspaper comics and influenced a generation of cartoonists. These syndicated daily strips — alongside Sunday pages — are the direct material ancestors of the comic book format, establishing the recurring cast, sequential panel logic, and speech balloon conventions the medium still uses.