Polly and Her Pals — 1922-05-03

Four panels, black and white: Pa storms in vowing to handle the situation himself after Ma admits she has talked herself hoarse. He then delivers an absolute prohibition—Polly is forbidden from seeing Pete Punk Pusson. Polly coolly replies that his language is "plain English, ain't it?" Pa agrees it is painfully plain. Final panel: Polly walks away delivering the kicker—"But it isn't English!" Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, making it one of the longest-running early strips. His angular Art Deco draftsmanship and compressed comic timing helped establish the daily newspaper strip's vernacular: stacked speech balloons, reaction beats, and a recurring family cast that readers tracked episode to episode—precisely the serialized character logic that proto-comic-book anthologies would later package and sell.