Influence and Legacy
Polly and Her Pals was the first of several comic strips about flirting pretty girls, including Edgar Martin's Boots and Her Buddies, Chic Young's Blondie and Fritzi Ritz (Larry Whittington's strip that later spawned Nancy). Although Polly and Her Pals was highly influential, it was never a licensing success, and lacked the spin-off books and merchandise generated by other contemporary comic strips.
The comic was not only remarkable for its creation of a new subgenre and prototype, but also for its cubism-inspired graphics.
| “ | Now, Sterrett—that's the guy who was the greatest. To think that a whole generation has grown up worshipping Picasso when the guy who did it far better was Sterrett! Far better than Picasso—and Herriman. I love Herriman—he has his own special place. But I love Sterrett—he belongs someplace else... | ” |
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—Al Capp, Cartoonist PROfiles #37, March 1978 |
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Six full-color Polly Sunday pages were prominently featured in Bill Blackbeard's The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (Abrams, 1977), representing for many modern fans their first opportunity to see the strip. It is now considered one of the masterpieces of American comic strips of the Interwar period, both for its graphic qualities and its storytelling and humor. Sterrett has been lauded as one of the great innovators of the comic strip form, and is one of 16 groundbreaking cartoonists featured in America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989, Abbeville Press) by comics historian Rick Marschall. When Polly and Her Pals was included in the Library of Congress exhibition Cartoon America, it was praised for its unique graphic style, and is considered to be, together with Krazy Kat, the epitome of the Art Deco style in comics. It had considerable influence on many later cartoonists, including Jules Feiffer.
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