Polly and Her Pals — PO361205

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, is one of the longest-running and most formally inventive strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily follows a rubbery-limbed older man — likely Paw Perkins — trading quips with a younger figure about boxing and tennis. The gag turns on the word "intimate," landing in the final panel with physical comedy. Sterrett's draftsmanship here shows his characteristic bold silhouettes, fluid line, and compressed staging within tight horizontal panels. His Sunday pages would grow far more abstract and cubist-influenced, but even these dailies reveal the confident panel-to-panel rhythm that newspaper strip artists pioneered — the direct ancestor of the comic book page format that would crystallize by the late 1930s.