Polly and Her Pals — "Pa Was Asking the Impossible"

Clifford Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* daily strip opens with Pa and a companion puzzling over a sobbing child. Pa offers a quarter to stop crying and "be a good boy" — the child wails back "I c'c'cant!" When pressed why, the punchline lands: "C'c'cause I'm a girl!" Sterrett draws in a confident ink line with dense cross-hatching, expressive figures, and speech balloons whose stuttered text carries the comic rhythm. Launched in 1912, *Polly* ran for decades and became one of the most formally inventive strips of its era — Sterrett later pushed Sunday pages into near-abstract Art Deco compositions. Daily strips like this one, syndicated nationally, were the direct economic and physical ancestor of the comic book: repackage the pages, staple them, and the medium is born.