Polly and Her Pals — PO361203

Four panels of Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals*, titled "Not as Light as a Feather." A disheveled man—rumpled, battered, feathers clinging to him—explains to a companion that he spent the night with a honorable countryman, whose native bed pillow was a block of wood, and that a subsequent pillow fight left him in his current state. Sterrett's linework is loose and expressive, with exaggerated postures carrying the timing. Launched in 1912 in the *New York Evening Telegram*, *Polly and Her Pals* became one of America's longest-running strips, pioneering bold graphic design and abstract background patterns. These syndicated daily strips—alongside Sunday pages from Outcault, McCay, and Herriman—established the visual language of sequential panels and speech balloons that directly seeded the first comic books of the 1930s.