LOAC Essentials Volume 3: Polly and Her Pals 1933

P. Craig Russell, in his brief foreword to  Polly and Her Pals: Complete Sunday Comics 1913-1927 , described Cliff Sterrett as an 'artist's artist', someone "whose abilities, graphic sophistication, and unfettered imagination inspire reverence and awe" but also someone that "never becomes a pop phenomenon".One reason for that is that Sterrett was so far ahead of the pack in his own times that contemporary readers probably didn't quite know what to make of 'Polly and Her Pals'. Domestic chaos was at the heart of comedy strips such as ' Bringing Up Father ' and ' Blondie ' too but that chaos never spilled over into the art. That (relative) lack of popularity meant that publishers had little incentive to collect the bulk of Sterrett's work, the dailies, which in turn meant future generations of comic-strip fans never got to see them. And, as Dean Mullaney notes in the preface to this book, "one can't celebrate what one hasn't seen".This book, the third in the Library of American Comics's affordable 'Essentials' line, goes some way to making up that deficiency, printing the dailies from Monday, January 2, 1933 through Monday, January 1, 1934, one strip per page, and at more or less the same size that newspapers would have originally published them.The choice of dates is not coincidental. While Sterrett had been going on and off to an artist's colony in Ogunquit, ME, since the 1920s, it was only in 1932 that he bought a house in the area. (There is a long introduction by Bruce Canwell in this book which delineates just how an artist's colony sprang up in that corner of Maine as well as Sterrett's own links with other artists over there, replete with period photographs.)The pacing of the book is interesting. Fortnight-long gags on Polly's new aquarium and adventures with fresh air fiends are followed by a month-long running strip on a Yogi, then more shorter tales until we reach the meat of the book -- the farm tale that runs from Monday, 06/12/1933 until Thankgiving Thursday, 11/30/1933 (with a brief two-page coda).This gives Sterrett the opportunity to draw some of his favorite subjects -- animals. Disney's animators had nothing on Sterrett when it came to depicting anthropomorphised beasts, from 'Henry' the pig (who turns out to be a 'Henrietta') to a mule named 'Dinah' (short for 'Dynamite') to an escaped tiger. (This last sequence provides a possible clue to the location of Stoney Brook Farm, with Paw mentioning the Adirondacks in the 10/31/1933 strip. Why not something in Maine?)This is followed by the most surreal tale, and my own favorite, 'Babes in Toyland', when 'Santy Claus' turns the entire Perkins clan -- right down to the cat -- into wooden toys and sends them to live in Toyland up to Christmas. (Laurel and Hardy's film of the same name was released in the early part of 1934, about three months after this sequence. Just coincidence, or was Sterrett inspired by advance publicity for the movie?)You can't imagine anything like this happening to Maggie and Jiggs or Blondie and Dagwood, but it is all surreal yet played out with a deadpan logic. No wonder that readers in the 1920s and 1930s didn't quite know what to make of 'Polly and her Pals'!Equally subversive is Sterrett's treatment of the non-whites in his strip, Neewah the (Japanese?) valet, and the Hulls, Liza and Cocoa. Technically servants -- and drawn according to the stupid stereotypes of the period -- Sterrett somehow gives them every bit as much respect as he does to the extended Perkins clan, possibly more.On 04/03/1933, 'Elbow Grease', readers would have seen Liza (literally) drag Paw off to do the dishes. On 05/30/1933, 'A Satisfied Customer', they would have shared Paw's amazement at seeing Liza's boyfriend Amos in his new car, one much better than Paw's rattletrap.Cocoa is drawn more stereotypically than either Liza or Neewah but his expressionless Buster Keaton face through much of the long chicken-rustling sequence -- probably the most troubling to a 21st century eye -- is oddly funny. While Sterrett is perfectly capable of showing a range of emotions on Cocoa's face -- as he always does with Liza and Neewah -- you get the feeling that the almost Buddha-like detachment is deliberate. Even in the Thanksgiving tableau on Page 304 when everyone else is smiling -- bar the ever-grumpy "Angel" -- Cocoa alone is neither happy nor sad but maintains his Zen equanimity.In the context of the time that these strips were drawn -- when Jim Crow laws were still in effect -- this was amazingly progressive for the 'funny' pages.Speaking of "Angel" brings up one of the things I miss in this book, namely a family tree on the lines of the LoAC's previous efforts  LOAC Essentials 2: The Gumps - The Saga of Mary Gold  and  Gasoline Alley Volume 1 . We can figure out Polly's relationship with "Maw" and "Paw" but what exactly is the connection to Ashur, Angel, Maggie, Carrie, and Del?I miss the glorious colors and more imaginative layouts of Sterrett's Sundays but the dailies compensate by giving more space for extended narratives. If you are a fan of that uniquely American art form called the newspaper comic strip this book is indeed an 'Essential'.

Cliff Sterrett was a comic strip artist of the first rank and to see so much of his work printed here in such clarity makes this a book well worth having. I highly recommend it to anyone with a love of graphic art, comic strip art, comic strip history, or for anyone who just likes to laugh, to seek out this book and add it to their collection.

Another great addition to your LOAC library - read it with my son, who was a bit mystified by this bygone era's sense of humour.

Most know Cliff Sterrett's masterpiece, "Polly and Her Pals," only in its Sunday incarnation. It was on the Sunday page, for the better part of a decade, that Sterrett's graphic artistry went wild, bringing surrealism into the domecile of the Perkins family, where it felt right at home. But inbetween those Sundays were the black & white daily strips, where the artist spun yarns spanning anywhere from a few days to several weeks long."Polly" had been around in one form or another since 1912, taking on the "Polly and Her Pals" moniker in 1913. Over the years, the emphasis shifted from Polly to her family: "Pa" Sam'l Perkins and "Ma" Suzie, and a houseful of freeloading cousins and in-laws, chief among them Ashur Earl Perkins, seemingly glued to an easy chair and dispensing much advice but little work. Pa's allies are Neewah, the Chinese butler/houseboy, and Kitty, a cat with all the wisdom but none of the loquaciousness of Herriman's Krazy feline.While the Sunday strips were usually devoted to Sam'l's mishaps, the dailies engaged more of the extended family, though Pa was still the center of attention. In this volume, the Perkins family is plagued by Polly's notion to sleep with the windows open, Ashur's personal fakir, Pa's desire to buy a new car, and a move from the city to a country farmhouse. The bizarre Christmas sequence, in which the entire family is transformed into wooden dolls, was inspired by cover art Sterrett had provided for "Circulation" magazine in 1925.For the most part, these stories are delightfully humorous romps, punctuated by Sterrett's surreal visuals. Polly, as usual, is barely present, a near-nonentity with a caricatured glamour face who is little more than a catalyst for her family's wacky adventures. The strips disappoint only when it comes to the Perkins' cook Liza and her boyfriend Cocoa; guess what color they are? Given the full integration and warm characterization of Neewah, it is doubly disappointing to see Sterrett resorting to worn minstrel show gags; Sterrett and "Polly" are too good for such things.There have been only a couple previous attempts to collect the "Polly" dailies, both in the early '90s. I hope IDW will collect those and the remaining daily continuities into more of these odd-shaped but wonderful daily strip collections. This is lost treasure worth finding.

So this is good stuff. Cliff Sterrett has a surreal bend to his art at times which adds to the comedy of the strip. While it's a gag a day comic, the stories link together into two week arcs, like Paw buying a new suit or a car and dealing with the fallout. There's also the extended arc of Polly's family moving to a farm with two week arcs within that.There's some casual 1930s racism that you'll need to overlook but this is a hilarious collection. I gather that Polly was the star at the beginning but pretty much everything in this volume revolves around her Paw, aka Sam. I'm guessing it's like when the Simpsons writers decided Homer was the best character to write for instead of Bart.

A great little book in a very interesting format, very suitable to print dailies.

Great stuff