Polly and Her Pals — PO350103

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in 1912, is among the longest-running American newspaper comic strips and one of the most visually inventive. This three-panel daily, titled "Ashes to Ashes," shows a household under measles quarantine — a sign on the door confirms it — while a character wonders aloud where Elmer has gone, since he "hain't in the house" and can't have escaped. The mystery resolves in slapstick chaos: Elmer is discovered buried in a coal or ash bin, erupting in a cloud of debris. Sterrett's scratchy, densely crosshatched draftsmanship and fluid panel-to-panel staging exemplify the daily newspaper strip's role as the direct ancestor of the comic book — recurring characters, sequential panels, and speech balloons all refined here before the first comic book existed.