Polly and Her Pals — 1925-02-06

Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, making it one of the longest-running family strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily follows the domestic orbit of Polly's barrel-shaped, plaid-suited father Paw, who here exchanges barbs with a visiting Mr. Perkins — accused of vanishing during "the gay social season" — while Polly herself appears only in the opening panel, already dressed and moving on. Sterrett's draftsmanship is economical and assured: crosshatched curtains, expressive silhouettes, speech balloons integrated tightly into the panel grid. Strips like this one — syndicated daily to hundreds of papers — established the recurring cast, the cliffhanger exit, and the compressed visual pacing that comic-book editors would codify a decade later as the medium's standard grammar.