Polly and Her Pals — PO361204

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* (launched 1912, *New York Evening Telegram*) was among the first newspaper strips built around a recurring domestic ensemble. This four-panel daily — titled *Pa's Been Saving for a Rainy Day* — shows Pa fretting over rain while Polly and a companion reassure him: Ma is across town and sure to shelter in a shop until the storm passes. Pa's punchline: that's *exactly* what worries him. Sterrett's draftsmanship is dense and decorative, figures wrapped in floral patterns, postures exaggerated into near-abstraction. His later work pushed into full Art Deco geometry; even here the panel compositions are tightly choreographed. Strips like this one — syndicated dailies with fixed characters, sequential panels, and integrated speech balloons — formed the direct structural model from which the comic book format emerged in the 1930s.