Polly and Her Pals — 1922-06-29

Four panels track a domestic standoff: Pa, contentedly seated outdoors, is told he *must* take the women to a lecture on 'the Heart, Liver and Lungs' at the Casino. His repeated flat refusal—'Oh! No I Ain't!'—ends with him flung, chair and all, into the distance, muttering 'I abominates organ recitals.' Sterrett's linework is spare and kinetic, the figures rubbery and expressive. Launched in 1912 in the *New York Evening Telegram*, *Polly and Her Pals* was among the earliest strips to develop a stable cast across years of daily and Sunday pages. Those accumulated newspaper pages—with their repeating characters, sequential panels, and speech balloons—formed the direct template from which the comic book format would be assembled and reprinted in the 1930s.