Polly and Her Pals — October 6, 1922

Four panels of Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* track Pa's mounting humiliation over Tommy, a suitor Ma defends and Pa despises. The strip opens with Ma swooning — "Oh! Pa, please!" — while Pa insists he doesn't think Tommy a bad egg: "I *know*!!" By the final panel Pa sits deflated, muttering "Jess a seccunt, Mr. Paw Perkins — jess a seccunt!!" Sterrett's draftsmanship is boldly expressive: hatched clothing patterns, exaggerated postures, and fluid balloon placement carry the comedy without captions. Launched in 1912 by Sterrett for the Hearst syndicate, *Polly and Her Pals* pioneered the domestic-comedy strip form, its visual rhythms and recurring cast directly shaping the panel grammar that newspaper comics — the true cradle of the American comic book — handed to later generations.