Polly and Her Pals — Daily Strip, c. 1922

Six panels follow 'Ma' as she argues with 'Paw' about their daughter's romantic choices — she has apparently thrown over a suitor named Fred. Ma, drawn as a stout, curly-haired woman in a billowing dress, dominates every panel with emphatic gestures and sharp retorts, culminating in the punchline: asked how she knows her daughter will recognize the right man, Ma fires back, 'I didn't!' Clifford Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, eventually developing a bold, nearly cubist Sunday-page style. These daily strips, syndicated nationally, exemplify the newspaper comic as a mass medium — recurring characters, compressed gag structure, and speech balloons carrying the full narrative weight — the direct formal ancestors of the comic book.