Polly and Her Pals — 1922-05-25

Four panels, black-and-white ink. A young suitor visits Pa Perkins to announce he wishes to lay his "huge fortune" at Polly's feet. Pa asks how much; the man admits to "derp near a thousand dollars all told." Pa scoffs — "Great guns, an' y'call that huge?" — then recovers with deadpan gallantry: the sum would *look* huge beside Polly's tiny feet. Polly, overhearing from the doorway, swoons at the compliment. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in the *New York Evening Telegram* in 1912, making it one of the longest-running newspaper comic strips in American history. These syndicated daily strips — alongside Outcault's *Yellow Kid* and McCay's *Little Nemo* — built the visual language of sequential art: consistent recurring characters, speech balloons anchored to figures, and gag-per-strip pacing that would directly structure the first comic book anthologies of the 1930s.