Polly and Her Pals — 1922-05-18

Four panels follow Polly home on a Thursday night while her father Paw waits up. When she enters disheveled and moody, Paw guesses a lover's quarrel; Polly corrects him — the engagement is broken, and the final panel lands the punchline on Paw himself: *he's* the one who's broke. Sterrett draws with loose, angular lines and expressive figure work, Polly's flapper silhouette contrasting with Paw's rumpled domesticity. Launched in 1912 in the *New York Evening Telegram*, *Polly and Her Pals* was among the earliest newspaper strips to build its comedy around a recurring family ensemble. Such daily and Sunday strips — syndicated nationally by services like King Features — established the visual conventions (sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, consistent characters) that comic books would directly inherit and industrialize two decades later.