Polly and Her Pals — 1922-07-13

Pa Has the Same Opinion as the Cat — Four panels follow two stout women attempting to train a stubbornly uncooperative cat to sit up. The cat refuses; the women declare it hopeless and unintelligent. In the final panel, Pa — sprawled on the floor in rumpled clothes — delivers the punchline: he can tell from the cat's expression that it sees no more sense in these tricks than he does. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, making it one of the longest-running American newspaper strips. His draftsmanship grew increasingly abstract through the 1920s–30s, anticipating Cubist-influenced cartooning. Daily newspaper strips like this one established the sequential panel format, recurring cast, and speech-balloon grammar that directly shaped the comic book form when publishers began reprinting such strips as standalone pamphlets in the early 1930s.