Polly and Her Pals — 1925-06-13

Four panels follow Maw, the formidable matriarch, as she drags herself through a sweltering day's housework while the men loaf. Driven to the porch for air, she is ambushed by a young suitor who dramatically threatens suicide unless she forwards his suit with Polly; Maw's closing line — *Wal, ye'd better not let Ma ketch you at it, young feller!* — punctures his melodrama flat. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in the New York Evening Telegram in 1912, making it one of the earliest strips to center a recurring family ensemble. Sterrett's draftsmanship grew increasingly bold through the 1920s, his backgrounds dissolving into near-abstract pattern — an influence felt across the daily strip tradition that directly seeded the first comic-book reprint anthologies of the 1930s.