Polly and Her Pals

Four panels: Polly asserts her adulthood to her stout, bonneted mother Maw, who counters that sparing the rod spoiled her. Polly fires back that parents make mistakes wielding it — she only ever got switched for telling the truth. Maw cheerfully concedes it worked, and the strip closes with Polly literally knocked off her feet by the admission. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the Hearst syndicate, making it one of the longest-running daily strips of its era. Sterrett's draftsmanship grew increasingly geometric and Art Deco-inflected through the 1920s, influencing later cartoonists considerably. Daily strips like this one — syndicated nationally, cut out, and often bound by readers — form the direct material ancestry of the comic book format.