Polly and Her Pals — 1922-05-04

Four panels follow Pa, a squinting little man in formal dress, as he declines to dance with 'the Dowager' — the floor is too crowded, he tells Polly. He then refuses the same dance with Polly herself, citing lack of room. When she presses him, Pa reveals his real reason: 'they ain't room taking a cat on that floor!' The final panel shows him launched bodily through a door, Polly shouting 'Scum!' Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, making it one of the longest-running domestic comedy strips of the era. Sterrett's fluid Art Deco linework and precisely timed panel rhythm — silences, reversals, explosive payoff — demonstrate exactly the visual grammar that newspaper dailies contributed directly to the emerging comic-book form.